TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

WITH 


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 


iStacmillan’s  pocfat  American  anli  ling  list)  Classics 


Addams’  Twenty  Years  at  Hull  House. 
Addison’s  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley. 
American  Democracy  from  Washington 
to  Wilson. 

American  Patriotism  in  Prose  and  Verse. 
Andersen’s  Fairy  Tales. 

Arabian  Nights’  Entertainments. 
Arnold’s  Sonrab  and  Rustum. 

Austen’s  Pride  and  Prejudice. 

Austen’s  Sense  and  Sensibility. 

Bacon’s  Essays. 

Baker’s  Out  of  the  Northland. 

Bible  (Memorable  Passages). 
Blackmore’s  Lorna  Doone. 

Boswell’s  Life  of  Johnson.  Abridged. 
♦Browning’s  Shorter  Poems. 

Mrs.  Browning’s  Poems  (Selected). 
Bryant’s  Thanatopsis,  etc. 

Bryce  on  American  Democracy. 
Bulwer-Lytton’s  Last  Days  ©f  Pompeii. 
Bunyan’s  The  Pilgrim’s  Progress. 
Burke’s  Speech  on  Conciliation. 

Burns’  Poems  (Selections). 

Byron’s  Childe  Harold’s  Pilgrimage. 
Byron’s  Shorter  Poems. 

Carlyle’s  Essay  on  Burns. 

Carlyle’s  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship. 
Carroll’s  Alice’s  Adventures  in  Wonder¬ 
land. 

Chaucer’s  Prologue  and  Knight’s  Tale. 
Chaucer,  The  Modern  Reader’s  (Selec¬ 
tions). 

‘‘Church’s  The  Story  of  the  Iliad. 
‘Church’s  The  Story  of  the  Odyssey. 
Churchill’s  Richard  Carvel. 

Churchill’s  The  Crisis. 

Coleridge’s  The  Ancient  Mariner. 
Cooper’s  The  Deerslayer. 

Cooper’s  The  Last  of  the  Mohican: 
Cooper’s  The  Spy. 

Curtis’  Prue  and  I. 

Dana’s  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast. 
Defoe’s  Robinson  Crusoe.  Part  I. 
Defoe’s  Robinson  Crusoe.  Abridged. 

De  Quincey’s  Confessions  of  an  English 
Opium-Eater. 

De  Quincey’s  Joan  of  Arc,  and  The  Eng¬ 
lish  Mail-Coach. 

Dickens’  A  Christmas  Carol,  and  The 
Cricket  on  the  Hearth. 

Dickens’  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities. 

Dickens’  David  Copperfield.  (Two  vols.) 
Dickens’  Oliver  Twist. 

Dryden’s  Palamon  and  Arcite. 

Early  American  Orations,  1760-1824. 


Edwards’  Sermons. 

Eliot’s  Adam  Bede. 

Eliot’s  Mill  on  the  Floss. 

Eliot’s  Silas  Marner. 

Emerson’s  Earlier  Poems. 

Emerson’s  Essays. 

Emerson’s  Representative  Men. 

English  Essays. 

♦English  Narrative  Poems. 

Epoch-making  Papers  in  U.  S.  History. 
Franklin’s  Autobiography. 

Mrs.  Gaskelfs  Cranford. 

Goldsmith’s  The  Deserted  Village,  and 
Other  Poems. 

Goldsmith’s  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 
Gray’s  Elegy,  etc.,  and  Cowper’s  Jo' 
Gilpin,  etc. 

Grimm’s  Fairy  Tales. 

♦Hale’s  The  Man  Without  a  Country. 
Hawthorne’s  Grandfather’s  Chair. 
Hawthorne’s  Mosses  from  an  Old  Ma;  ( 
Hawthorne’s  Scarlet  Letter. 

Hawthorne’s  Tanglewood  Tales. 
Hawthorne’s  The  House  of  the  Se 
Gables. 

Hawthorne’s  Twice-told  Tales  (Set 
tions). 

Hawthorne’s  Wonder-Book. 

Holmes’  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Tab 
♦Holmes’  Poems. 

‘Homer’s  Iliad  (Translated). 

*Homer’s  Odyssey  (Translated). 

Hughes’ Tom  Brown's  School  Days. 
Hugo’s  Les  Miserables.  Abridged. 
Huxley’s  Selected  Essays  and  Addresse 
Irving’s  Knickerbocker’s  History. 

Irving’s  Life  of  Goldsmith. 

Irving’s  Sketch  Book. 

Irving’s  Tales  of  a  Traveller. 

Irving’s  The  Alhambra. 

♦Keary’s  Heroes  of  Asgard. 
a  Kempis  :  The  Imitation  of  Christ. 
Kingsley’s  Hereward  the  Wake. 
Kingsley’s  The  Heroes. 

Kingsley’s  Westward  Ho ! 

Lamb’s  Tales  from  Shakespeare. 

Lamb’s  The  Essays  of  Elia. 

Letters  from  Many  Pens. 

Lincoln’s  Addresses,  Inaugurals,  .a; 
Letters. 

Lockhart’s  Life  of  Scott.  Abridged. 
♦London’s  Call  of  the  Wild. 

Longfellow’s  Evangeline. 

Longfellow’s  Hiawatha. 

Longfellow’s  Miles  Standish, 


*  Cannot  ba  aold  in  British  Dominions. 


jlacmillan’s  pocket  American  ant  lEngltsi)  Classics 


Longfellow’s  Miles  Standish  and  Minor 
Poems. 

Longfellow’s  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn. 
Lowell’s  Earlier  Essays. 

Lowell’s  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal. 
Macaulay’s  Essay  on  Addison. 

Macaulay’s  Essay  on  Hastings. 
Macaulay’s  Essay  on  Lord  Clive. 
Macaulay’s  Essay  on  Milton. 

Macaulay’s  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome. 
Macaulay’s  Life  of  Samuel  Johnson. 
Malory’s  Le  Morte  d’Arthur. 

Milton’s  Minor  Poems. 

Milton’s  Paradise  Lost,  Books  I  and  11. 
Old  English  Ballads. 
r"  Old  Testament  Selections. 

Pal  grave’s  Golden  Treasury. 

Parkman’s  Oregon  Trail. 

Plutarch’s  Lives  of  Caesar,  Brutus,  and 
Mark  Antony. 
er  Poe’s  Poems. 

Poe’s  Prose  Tales  (Selections). 

Poems,  Narrative  and  Lyrical. 

Poole’s  The  Harbor. 

Pope’s  Homer’s  Iliad. 

J  Pope’s  Homer’s  Odyssey. 

Pope’s  The  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

Reade’s  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth 
♦Representative  Short  Stories. 

Roosevelt’s  Writings. 

♦Rossetti’s  (Christina)  Selected  Poems 
Ruskin’s  Sesame  and  Lilies. 
Ruskin’sThe  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  and 
Queen  of  the  Air. 

Scott’s  Guy  Mannering- 
Scott’s  Ivanhoe. 

Scott’s  Kenilworth. 

Scott’s  Lady  of  the  Lake. 

Scott’s  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel. 

Scott’s  Marmion. 

Scott’s  Quentin  Durward. 

Scott’s  Rob  Roy. 

Scott’s  The  Talisman. 

Select  Orations. 

Selected  Poems,  for  Required  Reading 
in  Secondary  Schools. 

Selections  from  American  Poetry. 
♦Selections  for  Oral  Reading. 

♦Cannot  be  sold  in 


Shakespeare’s  As  You  Like  It. 
Shakespeare’s  Coriolanus. 

Shakespeare’s  Hamlet. 

Shakespeare’s  Henry  V. 

Shakespeare’s  Julius  Caesar. 
Shakespeare’s  King  Lear. 

Shakespeare’s  Macbeth. 

Shakespeare’s  Merchant  of  Venice. 
Shakespeare’s  Midsummer  Nights 
Dream. 

Shakespeare’s  Richard  II. 

Shakespeare’s  Richard  III. 
Shakespeare’s  Romeo  and  Juliet. 
Shakespeare’s  The  Tempest. 
Shakespeare’s  Twelfth  Night. 

Shelley  and  Keats :  Poems. 

Sheridan’s  The  Rivals  and  The  School 
for  Scandal. 

♦Short  Stories. 

♦Short  Stories  and  Selections. 

Southern  Orators:  Selections. 

Southern  Poets :  Selections. 

Southey’s  Life  of  Nelson. 

Spenser’s  Faerie  Queene,  Book  I. 
♦Stevenson’s  Kidnapped. 

♦Stevenson’s  The  Master  of  Ballantrae. 
♦Stevenson’s  Travels  with  a  Donkey,  and 
An  Inland  Voyage. 

♦Stevenson’s  Treasure  Island. 

Swift’s  Gulliver’s  Travels. 

♦Tennyson’s  Idylls  of  the  King. 
♦Tennyson’s  In  Memoriam. 

♦Tennyson’s  The  Princess. 

♦Tennyson’s  Shorter  Poems. 

Thackeray’s  English  Humorists. 
Thackeray’s  Henry  Esmond. 
Thompson’s  The  Hound  of  Heaven. 
Thoreau’s  Walden. 

♦Trevelyan’s  Life  of  Macaulay.  Abridged. 
Virgil’s  /Eneid. 

Washington’s  Farewell  Address,  and 
Webster’s  First  Bunker  Hill  Ora¬ 
tion. 

Whittier’s  Snow-Bound  and  Other  Early 
Poems. 

Wister’s  The  Virginian. 

Woodman’s  Journal. 

Wordsworth’s  Shorter  Poems. 

British  Dominions. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •  BOSTON  •  CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd- 

TORONTO 


V-  f 


Jane  Addams 


TWENTY  YEARS 
AT  HULL-HOUSE 

WITH 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 

BY 

JANE  ADDAMS 

AUTHOR  OF  “DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS,” 

“THE  SPIRIT  OF  YOUTH  AND  THE  CITY  STREETS,” 

“peace  and  bread  in  time  of  WAR,”  ETC. 


Edited  by 

EVA  WARNER  CASE 

FORMER  director  of  publications 
MANUAL  TRAINING  HIGH  SCHOOL 
KANSAS  CITY,  MISSOURI 


boston  college  library 
CHU8TNWT  HILL,  MASS, 

Jleto  §?ork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1923 


viii  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


continuation  of  her  efforts,  her  most  recent  work,  “Peace  and 
Bread  in  Time  of  War,”  published  in  1922,  is  recommended. 
For  those  who  have  not  time  for  this,  the  following  passage 
from  “Women  as  World  Builders,”  by  Floyd  Dell,  may  help 
toward  an  understanding  of  Miss  Addams’s  peace  activities: 

“What  is  perhaps  the  most  outstanding  fact  in  the  tem¬ 
perament  of  Miss  Addams  is  revealed  only  indirectly  in  her 
autobiography:  it  may  be  called  the  passion  of  conciliation. 
....  It  is  not  intended  to  suggest  that  Miss  Addams  is  one 
of  those  inveterate  compromisers  who  prefer  a  bad  peace  to 
a  good  war.  But  she  has  the  gift  of  imaginative  sympathy; 
and  it  is  impossible  for  her  to  have  toward  either  party  in  a 
conflict  the  cold  hostility  that  each  party  has  for  the  other. 
She  sees  both  sides,  and  even  though  one  side  is  the  wrong 
side,  she  cannot  help  seeing  why  its  partisans  believe  in  it.” 

Since  any  attempt  at  interpreting  Miss  Addams  or  her 
motives  must  fall  far  short  of  the  magnificent  self-revealment 
of  her  own  simple  story,  the  reader  is  left  to  form  his  own  judg¬ 
ment  after  reading  the  book.  “  Twenty  Y ears  at  Hull-House  ” 
has  been  edited,  not  for  literary  values  but  for  its  influence 
in  citizenship  and  Americanization.  This  edition  is  intend¬ 
ed  primarily  for  young  people  in  the  early  years  of  high  school 
and  is  especially  adapted  for  supplementary  reading  in  courses 
in  community  civics  though  equally  valuable  in  reading 
courses  in  English.  Since  its  primary  purpose  is  arousing  a 
sense  of  civic  responsibility,  the  notes  are  few  and  brief, 
with  no  attempts  at  “scholarly”  or  “research”  effects.  The 
book  itself  is  such  a  throbbing,  vital  human  document  that 
attempts  to  improve  upon  it  in  any  way  seem  useless.  Only 
where  information  is  needed  to  give  a  clear  understanding  of 
the  narrative  or  to  bring  out  the  author's  purpose  has  a  note 
been  supplied.  Where  reference  is  made  to  some  well-known 
English  or  American  writer,  with  whom  high-school  students 


INTRODUCTION 


IX 


should  be  familiar,  no  note  is  given.  For  foreign  authors  or 
where  some  special  explanation  is  needed  the  necessary 
information  is  at  hand. 

The  study  outline,  too,  has  grown  out  of  the  essential 
purpose  of  the  book.  There  is  not  a  single  purely  “literary  ” 
question  in  the  list.  All  that  are  not  intended  merely  to 
test  the  student’s  comprehension  of  the  facts  Miss  Addams 
has  presented  are  so  framed  as  to  bring  out  the  sense  of  civic 
responsibility  in  the  youthful  mind. 

II 

“To  provide  a  center  for  a  higher  civic  and  social  life,  to 
institute  and  maintain  educational  and  philanthropic  enter¬ 
prises,  and  to  investigate  and  improve  the  condition  in  the 
industrial  districts  of  Chicago.” 

This  was  the  object  of  Hull-House  as  set  forth  in  its  first 
charter,  granted  in  1894.  In  the  succeeding  pages,  Miss 
Addams  has  traced  the  growth  of  the  settlement  and  explained 
the  ideals  of  the  residents  from  its  beginning  in  1889  up  to  the 
end  of  its  twentieth  year  in  1909.  Space  limitations  will  per¬ 
mit  only  the  briefest  further  mention  of  the  development  of 
the  various  original  Hull-House  activities  and  the  inception  of 
new  ones  since  1909. 

The  residential  force  at  Hull-House  numbers  approximately 
fifty  members  of  both  sexes  and  of  varying  races  and  creeds. 
While  no  university  qualification  has  ever  been  made,  the 
majority  of  the  residents  have  always  been  college  persons. 
The  residents  pay  their  own  expenses,  under  the  direction  of 
a  house  committee,  on  the  plan  of  a  cooperative  club.  The 
unmarried  women  have  quarters  in  the  original  Hull-House 
Building,  the  unmarried  men  live  in  the  Butler  Building, 
while  the  families  are  housed  in  the  Hull-House  Apartments 
and  the  Boys’  Club  Building. 


X 


TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


Applicants  are  received  on  six  months’  trial,  when  vacancies 
occur.  Those  who  prove  their  worth  and  are  voted  into  mem¬ 
bership  must  pledge  themselves  to  remain  for  two  years.  All 
these  residents  have  other  employment  or  are  persons  of 
independent  means.  Hence  they  give  only  their  leisure  time 
to  the  work  at  Hull-House.  In  addition  to  these  regular 
residents,  150  persons  come  to  Hull-House  each  week  as 
teachers,  visitors,  or  directors  of  clubs.  The  work  of  these 
nonresidents  proves  a  valuable  supplement  to  that  of  the 
regular  members. 

According  to  Hull-House  records,  9,000  persons  come  to  the 
settlement  each  week  during  the  winter  months  as  members 
of  organizations  or  parts  of  an  audience.  The  attractions 
offered  include  classroom  instruction  in  English,  current 
topics,  typing,  and  arts  and  crafts  for  the  adults,  with  other 
classes  in  music,  drawing,  folk  dancing  and  the  domestic  arts 
for  the  children.  Free  public  lectures  on  topics  of  general 
social  and  scientific  interest  are  offered  every  Sunday  night, 
the  speakers  usually  being  professors  from  some  of  the  near-by 
universities.  Gymnasium  classes  are  maintained  for  old  and 
young  alike.  Advanced  courses  in  music  and  drawing,  as  well 
as  in  cooking  and  sewing  are  also  offered  to  adults.  Clubs  of 
various  kinds  supply  the  needs  of  the  men,  women,  and 
children  of  the  neighborhood. 

The  largest  of  the  men’s  clubs  is  the  West  Side  Sportsmen’s 
Association,  the  successor  of  the  Men’s  Club  mentioned  by 
Miss  Addams  in  Chapter  XV.  The  present  membership  is 
200.  Started  originally  to  attract  the  men  of  the  community 
from  less  desirable  places  of  recreation,  the  club  also  has  a 
civic  and  social  program.  Its  ambition  is  to  serve  the  Nine¬ 
teenth  Ward  and  the  community  in  the  same  way  that  the 
City  Club  and  other  civic  organizations  serve  the  city. 

Other  clubs  for  men  include  the  Greek  Olympic  Athletic 


INTRODUCTION 


xi 


Club,  many  of  whose  members  hold  wrestling  and  track 
records  at  home  and  over  seas;  the  Greek  Social  Group,  which 
holds  its  meetings  every  Sunday  evening,  with  an  open  session 
once  a  month  to  which  they  invite  their  friends  from  the 
Greek  colony  lying  north  of  Hull-House — the  largest  Greek 
colony  in  America;  and  the  Working  People’s  Social  Science 
Club,  where  every  conceivable  social  and  economic  question 
is  discussed  with  understanding  and  interest. 

The  Hull-House  Woman’s  Club,  with  meetings  every 
Wednesday  afternoon  from  October  to  May,  has  charge  of 
practically  all  the  mothers’  activities.  Its  programs  deal  with 
general  discussion  and  investigation  of,  and  action  upon 
questions  pertaining  to  household  science,  civics,  advance¬ 
ment  of  women,  and  care  of  children.  It  regularly  sends 
delegates  to  the  State  Federation  of  Women’s  Clubs  and  the 
League  of  Cook  County  Clubs. 

Through  some  twenty  committees  the  Woman’s  Club 
carries  on  a  variety  of  activities.  The  Old  Settlers’  Party, 
over  which  Miss  Addarns  presides,  has  been  a  feature  of  New 
Year’s  Day  at  Hull-House  for  twenty-six  years.  Six  parties 
for  the  grown  people  are  given  each  winter.  Another  series  of 
parties  for  young  people  of  working  age  who  do  not  belong  to 
any  of  the  social  clubs  at  Hull-House  is  a  part  of  the  club 
work.  The  first  Wednesday  in  May  of  each  year  is  set  aside 
for  a  Children’s  May  Party.  Only  club  members  and  their 
children  may  attend,  but  the  guests  usually  number  800.  At 
the  last  meeting  in  June,  the  club  holds  a  reception  for  the 
young  people  who  have  just  been  graduated  from  either  public 
or  private  schools,  and  prizes  are  offered  those  who  show  the 
best  records  for  attendance  and  punctuality  throughout  the 
school  course.  The  club  also  maintains  a  circulating  library  of 
about  1,700  volumes,  with  an  extensive  children’s  department. 

Other  clubs  for  women  include  the  People’s  Friendly  Club, 


xii  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

which  grew  out  of  the  group  which  twenty  years  ago  made 
the  first  attempt  at  cultivating  vacant  lots;  the  Circolo 
Italiano,  which  meets  weekly  for  dancing  and  social  enjoy¬ 
ment;  the  Greek  Women’s  Club  and  the  Italian  Women’s 
Club,  both  of  which,  in  addition  to  regular  recreational 
i  activities,  offer  courses  in  citizenship,  interior  decorating, 
and  Red  Cross  nursing. 

During  the  World  War,  the  Service  Star  Club,  made  up  of 
wives  and  mothers  of  soldiers,  met  weekly  at  Hull-House  to 
sing,  to  read  letters  from  the  camps,  at  home  or  abroad,  and 
each  evening  the  club  wrote  at  least  one  letter  to  soldiers, 
preferably  those  in  hospitals.  A  Red  Cross  chapter  was  also 
established  at  Hull-House,  the  work  taking  the  form  of 
knitting  and  making  hospital  supplies.  Many  lectures  and 
demonstrations  in  the  use  of  substitute  foods  and  the  lessen¬ 
ing  of  waste  were  given  under  the  direction  of  the  department 
of  food  conservation.  The  registration  service  of  the  Nine¬ 
teenth  Ward  in  the  women’s  division  of  the  State  Council  of 
National  Defense  was  stationed  at  Hull-House. 

Thus  the  Hull-House  residents,  while  championing  the 
cause  of  peace,  did  their  utmost  to  give  aid  and  succor  to  every 
branch  of  war  work. 

It  is  in  connection  with  the  children,  however,  that  the 
most  widely  varying  activities  are  to  be  found.  From  the 
kindergarten  to  the  boys  and  girls  of  working  age,  something 
is  offered  for  all.  There  are  sixty-four  children’s  clubs  meeting 
at  Hull-House  after  school  hours  each  day,  with  an  average 
weekly  attendance  of  more  than  800  boys  and  girls. 

Most  general  in  its  purpose  is  the  “Play  Club,”  to  which 
any  child  is  welcome  without  formal  membership  or  registra¬ 
tion.  It  was  organized  originally  to  take  care  of  the  smaller 
children,  who  must  be  looked  after  by  an  older  sister  during 
the  mother’s  absence  at  work  or  while  she  was  cumbered  with 


INTRODUCTION 


•  •  ® 


xm 

household  cares.  Here  these  “Little  Mothers ”  may  leave 
their  small  charges  to  play  while  they  themselves  joyfully 
attend  the  meeting  of  some  club  from  which  their  responsibil¬ 
ities  would  otherwise  have  barred  them. 

A  kindergarten  and  a  children’s  library  are  maintained,  the 
latter  in  connection  with  a  branch  of  the  public  library.  Some 
experimenting  with  street  games  in  summer  has  proved  very 
successful.  Fathers  and  mothers,  sitting  on  their  porches  in 
the  short  streets  near  Hull-House,  became  as  interested  as 
their  children,  and  a  fine  community  spirit  was  developed. 

Health  clinics  are  held  every  Tuesday  and  Wednesday  even¬ 
ings.  The  children  are  weighed,  measured,  and  thoroughly 
examined.  Those  needing  treatment  are  recommended  to  the 
Michaei-Reese  Dispensary  for  further  care.  The  children  are 
taught  to  care  for  their  teeth  and  are  drilled  on  a  chart  of 
health  requirements.  The  residents  report  interest  and  co¬ 
operation,  on  the  part  of  both  children  and  parents. 

The  largest  of  the  Hull-House  clubs  is  the  Boys’  Club,  with 
a  membership  of  more  than  a  thousand  a  year.  This  club 
occupies  its  own  building,  which  contains,  besides  club  rooms, 
bowling  alleys,  pool  room,  games  room  and  band  room,  a 
library  of  more  than  1,500  volumes,  class  and  study  rooms, 
and  shops  for  technical  instruction. 

The  club  is  open  during  the  afternoon  for  schoolboys  and  in 
the  evening  for  working  boys.  The  boys  have  a  band  of  sixty- 
two  pieces.  Pool  and  bowling  tournaments  are  held,  the  prize 
being  two  weeks  at  the  summer  camp,  which  is  held  every 
summer  during  July  and  August  at  Waukegan,  Ill.,  on  the 
shores  of  Lake  Michigan.  A  savings  bank  conducted  in  the 
club  helps  the  boys  to  save  money  for  their  camp  expenses. 
Members  of  the  Hull-House  Boy  Scouts  troop  save  their 
funds  to  attend  the  scout  camp  at  Whitehall,  Mich.,  where 
they  receive  a  thorough  two  weeks’  course  in  scouting,  or 


xiv  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


spend  a  week-end  at  the  Chicago  Scouts  camp  ground  on  the 
Desplaines  River  when  funds  for  the  Michigan  trip  are  not 
available. 

Numerous  classes  and  clubs  are  organized  within  the  club 
itself  to  suit  varying  needs.  A  printing  class  composed  of 
eighth-grade  boys  edits,  prints,  and  publishes  once  a  month 
the  “Hull-House  Boys’  Record,”  the  official  club  paper. 

In  the  cobbling  class,  under  the  direction  of  an  experienced 
practical  shoe  mender,  the  boys  learn  to  mend  shoes  for  them¬ 
selves  and  their  families,  the  only  charge  being  for  the  leather 
used.  In  the  four  woodwork  classes,  the  boys  are  encouraged 
to  make  things  which  can  be  used  in  the  home. 

The  Whittling  Club,  the  Camera  Club,  and  the  Chess  Club, 
all  under  the  guidance  of  experts,  are  self-explanatory.  The 
Explosion  Club,  so  named  from  a  slight  explosion  which 
occurred  during  a  chemistry  experiment,  is  composed  of  boys 
who  meet  once  a  week  for  a  story,  a  stereopticon  talk  on  birds 
or  animals,  a  visit  to  some  factory  or  plant,  and  an  occasional 
Saturday  hike. 

The  Hull-House  gymnasium,  opened  in  1893  and  enlarged 
and  remodeled  in  1900,  is  in  use  from  8:30  a.  m.  until  10  p.  m. 
seven  days  a  week.  Wednesday  and  Saturday  evenings  are 
set  aside  for  practice  and  contest  games.  Monthly  athletic 
contests  are  held,  in  addition  to  the  interclass  and  interclub 
leagues,  in  basket  ball,  track,  volley  ball,  and  indoor  baseball. 
The  monthly  gymnasium  attendance  is  about  3,000. 

All  members  are  given  a  physical  examination  before  being 
permitted  to  enter  the  classes.  The  members  are  divided  into 
four  groups:  junior  boys,  10  to  12  and  12  to  15  years;  news¬ 
boys,  12  to  15  years;  working  and  high-school  boys,  1 5  to  18 
years;  men  over  18.  The  last  named  are  arranged  in  groups 
ol  thirty.  The  gymnasium  has  fifteen  showers,  which  are  kept 
in  constant  use  by  the  members  and  the  men  of  the  neighbor- 


INTRODUCTION 


XV 


hood.  During  the  year,  more  than  6,000  paid  showers  are 
taken,  in  addition  to  12,000  taken  by  members. 

The  social  clubs  all  meet  in  the  evening.  At  present,  eight¬ 
een  such  clubs  meet  at  Hull-House  under  the  direction  of 
leaders  secured  by  the  Social  Clubs  committee.  Eight  are 
composed  of  both  boys  and  girls ■,  ten  entirely  of  girls.  Various 
nationalities  are  represented,  the  Italian,  Greek,  and  Jewish 
prevailing.  The  clubs  are  classified  into  age  groups:  the 
juniors  from  14  to  17,  the  seniors  17  or  over.  Club  policies 
are  debated  and  decided  upon  by  the  Hull-House  Clubs’ 
Monthly  Council,  to  which  all  the  clubs  maintain  regular 
representatives.  The  club  directors  also  hold  monthly  meet¬ 
ings,  which  are  occasionally  addressed  by  outside  speakers. 

The  purely  girls’  clubs  include  the  Ida  Wright  Club,  made 
up  largely  of  girls  of  Bohemian,  Polish,  and  Lithuanian 
parentage;  the  Silver  Sword,  of  Russian  girls  interested  in 
reading  and  dramatics;  the  Ukelele  Club,  which  originated  in 
connection  with  community  singing  during  the  war;  the  Book 
and  Needle  Club,  made  up  of  Russian  girls  who  like  to  read 
and  sew;  the  Nyoda,  originally  a  Camp  Fire  Group  of  Russian 
girls,  now  a  “discussion  club”;  the  Aim  Well  Club,  whose 
members,  all  Russian,  are  versed  in  parliamentary  law  and 
specialize  in  folk  dancing,  clay  modeling,  and  story-telling;  the 
Gloom  Dodgers,  another  Russian  group,  who  are  fond  of  out¬ 
door  festivities  and  do  much  picnicking  and  hiking;  the 
Tillicums,  another  former  Camp  Fire  Group,  interested  in 
community  gardening  in  summer  and  in  sewing  and  the  study 
of  current  movements  in  winter;  the  Jolly  Circle,  made  up  of 
15-year-olds  who  do  a  little  of  everything  to  amuse  them¬ 
selves;  and  the  Amateur  Ramblers,  who  intersperse  their 
rambles  with  making  towels  and  all  sorts  of  domestic  things 
for  their  “hope  chests.” 

1  he  mixed  clubs  comprise  the  Allegro,  composed  of  Italian 


xviii  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


Past  Chairman  of  Women’s  Peace  Party. 

Delegate  to  Peace  Convention  at  The  Hague,  1915. 
President  of  the  Women’s  International  League  for  Peace 
and  Freedom  since  its  organization  in  1915. 

Delegate  to  Peace  Convention,  Zurich,  1917;  Vienna,  1921; 
The  Hague,  1922. 

Started  January  12,  1923,  on  a  six-months’  tour  of  the  world 
in  the  interests  of  world  peace. 

Works 

“Democracy  and  Social  Ethics,”  1902. 

“Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,”  1907. 

“The  Social  Application  of  Religion,”  1908. 

“  The  Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets,”  1909. 
“Twenty  Years  at  Hull-House,”  1910. 

“A  New  Conscience  and  an  Ancient  Evil,”  1912. 

“A  Modern  Lear,”  in  “Satellite  Cities,”  G.  R.  Taylor, 

19IS- 

“Women’s  Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration,”  in 
“Women  at  the  Hague:  the  International  Congress  of  Women 
and  Its  Results,”  in  collaboration  with  Dr.  Alice  Hamilton 
and  Miss  Emily  Balch. 

“The  Long  Road  of  Woman’s  Memory,”  1916. 

“Peace  and  Bread  in  Time  of  War,”  1922. 

Bibliography 

“Heroines  of  Modern  Progress,”  E.  C.  and  W.  D.  Foster, 
1913.  (pp.  280-307) 

“American  Women  in  Civic  Work,”  H.  C.  Bennett,  1915. 
(pp.  71-90) 

“Women  as  World  Builders,”  Floyd  Dell,  1913.  (pp.  30- 

4°) 

“Heroines  of  Service,”  Mary  Parkman,  1917. 

“The  Unrest  of  Women,”  Edward  Sandford  Martin,  1913. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction . vii 

Twenty  Years  at  Hull-House .  i 

Notes . 415 

Study  Questions  .  .  .  . . 459 


xlx 


TWENTY  YEARS  AT 
HULL-HOUSE 

CHAPTER  I 
Earliest  Impressions 

On  the  theory  that  our  genuine  impulses  may  be 
connected  with  our  childish  experiences,  that  one’s 
bent  may  he  tracked  back  to  that  “No-Man’s  Land” 
where  character  is  formless  but  nevertheless  settling 
into  definite  lines  of  future  development,  I  begin  this  5 
record  with  some  impressions  of  my  childhood. 

All  of  these  are  directly  connected  with  my  father,  J 
although  of  course  I  recall  many  experiences  apart 
from  him.  I  was  one  of  the  younger  members  of  a  large 
family  and  an  eager  participant  in  the  village  life,  but  10 
because  my  father  was  so  distinctly  the  dominant 
influence  and  because  it  is  quite  impossible  to  set  forth 
all  of  one’s  early  impressions,  it  has  seemed  simpler  to 
string  these  first  memories  on  that  single  cord.  More¬ 
over,  it  was  this  cord  which  not  only  held  fast  my  1 5 
supreme  affection,  but  also  first  drew  me  into  the  moral 
concerns  of  life,  and  later  afforded  a  clew  there  to  which 
I  somewhat  wistfully  clung  in  the  intricacy  of  its  mazes. 


2 


TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


It  must  have  been  from  a  very  early  period  that  I 
recall  “horrid  nights”  when  I  tossed  about  in  my  bed 
because  I  had  told  a  lie.  I  was  held  in  the  grip  of  a 
miserable  dread  of  death,  a  double  fear,  first,  that  I 
5  myself  should  die  in  my  sins  and  go  straight  to  that 
fiery  Hell  which  was  never  mentioned  at  home,  but 
which  I  had  heard  all  about  from  other  children,  and, 
second,  that  my  father — representing  the  entire  adult 
world  which  I  had  basely  deceived — should  himself  die 
o  before  I  had  time  to  tell  him.  My  only  method  of 
obtaining  relief  was  to  go  downstairs  to  my  father’s 
room  and  make  full  confession.  The  high  resolve  to  do 
this  would  push  me  out  of  bed  and  carry  me  down  the 
stairs  without  a  touch  of  fear.  But  at  the  foot  of  the 
5  stairs  I  would  be  faced  by  the  awful  necessity  of  pass¬ 
ing  the  front  door — which  my  father,  because  of  his 
Quaker  tendencies,  did  not  lock — and  of  crossing  the 
wide  and  black  expanse  of  the  living  room  in  order  to 
reach  his  door.  I  would  invariably  cling  to  the  newel 
opost  while  I  contemplated  the  perils  of  the  situation, 
complicated  by  the  fact  that  the  literal  first  step  meant 
putting  my  bare  foot  upon  a  piece  of  oilcloth  in  front 
of  the  door,  only  a  few  inches  wide,  but  lying  straight 
in  my  path.  I  would  finally  reach  my  father’s  bedside 
5  perfectly  breathless  and,  having  panted  out  the  his¬ 
tory  of  my  sin,  invariably  received  the  same  assur¬ 
ance  that  if  he  “had  a  little  girl  who  told  lies,”  he  was 
very  glad  that  she  “felt  too  bad  to  go  to  sleep  after- 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS 


3 


wards.5’  No  absolution  was  asked  for  nor  received, 
but  apparently  the  sense  that  the  knowledge  of  my 
wickedness  was  shared,  or  an  obscure  understanding 
of  the  affection  which  underlay  the  grave  statement, 
was  sufficient,  for  I  always  went  back  to  bed  as  bold  as  s 
a  lion,  and  slept,  if  not  the  sleep  of  the  just,  at  least 
that  of  the  comforted. 

I  recall  an  incident  which  must  have  occurred  before 
I  was  seven  years  old,  for  the  mill  in  which  my  father 
transacted  his  business  that  day  was  closed  in  1867.  1 
The  mill  stood  in  the  neighboring  town  adjacent  to  its 
poorest  quarter.  Before  then  I  had  always  seen  the 
little  city  of  ten  thousand  people  with  the  admiring 
eyes  of  a  country  child,  and  it  had  never  occurred  to 
me  that  all  its  streets  were  not  as  bewilderingly  attrac-  1 
tive  as  the  one  which  contained  the  glittering  toyshop 
and  the  confectioner.  On  that  day  I  had  my  first 
sight  of  the  poverty  which  implies  squalor,  and  felt  the 
curious  distinction  between  the  ruddy  poverty  of  the 
country  and  that  which  even  a  small  city  presents  in  2 
its  shabbiest  streets.  I  remember  launching  at  my 
father  the  pertinent  inquiry  why  people  lived  in  such 
horrid  little  houses  so  close  together,  and  that  after 
receiving  his  explanation  I  declared  with  much  firm¬ 
ness  when  I  grew  up  I  should,  of  course,  have  a  large  2 
house,  but  it  would  not  be  built  among  the  other  large 
houses,  but  right  in  the  midst  of  horrid  little  houses 
like  these. 


4 


TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


That  curious  sense  of  responsibility  for  carrying  on 
the  world’s  affairs  which  little  children  often  exhibit 
because  “the  old  man  clogs  our  earliest  years,”  I 
remember  in  myself  in  a  very  absurd  manifestation, 
s  I  dreamed  night  after  night  that  every  one  in  the 
world  was  dead  excepting  myself,  and  that  upon  me 
rested  the  responsibility  of  making  a  wagon  wheel. 
The  village  street  remained  as  usual,  the  village  black¬ 
smith  shop  was  “all  there,”  even  a  glowing  fire  upon 
o  the  forge  and  the  anvil  in  its  customary  place  near  the 
door,  but  no  human  being  was  within  sight.  They  had 
all  gone  around  the  edge  of  the  hill  to  the  village 
cemetery,  and  I  alone  remained  alive  in  the  deserted 
world.  I  always  stood  in  the  same  spot  in  the  black- 
5  smith  shop,  darkly  pondering  as  to  how  to  begin,  and 
never  once  did  I  know  how,  although  I  fully  realized 
that  the  affairs  of  the  world  could  not  be  resumed  until 
at  least  one  wheel  should  be  made  and  something 
started.  Every  victim  of  nightmare  is,  I  imagine, 
o  overwhelmed  by  an  excessive  sense  of  responsibility 
and  the  consciousness  of  a  fearful  handicap  in  the  effort 
to  perform  what  is  required;  but  perhaps  never  were 
the  odds  more  heavily  against  “a  warder  of  the  world” 
than  in  these  reiterated  dreams  of  mine,  doubtless 
5  compounded  in  equal  parts  of  a  childish  version  of 
“Robinson  Crusoe”  and  of  the  end-of-the-world  predic¬ 
tions  of  the  Second  Adventists,  a  few  of  whom  were 
found  in  the  village.  The  next  morning  would  often 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS 


5 


find  me,  a  delicate  little  girl  of  six,  with  the  further 
disability  of  a  curved  spine,  standing  in  the  doorway 
of  the  village  blacksmith  shop,  anxiously  watching 
the  burly,  red-shirted  figure  at  work.  I  would  store  my 
mind  with  such  details  of  the  process  of  making  wheels  s 
as  I  could  observe,  and  sometimes  I  plucked  up  courage 
to  ask  for  more.  “Do  you  always  have  to  sizzle  the 
iron  in  water?”  I  would  ask,  thinking  how  horrid  it 
would  be  to  do.  “Sure!”  the  good-natured  blacksmith 
would  reply,  “that  makes  the  iron  hard.”  I  would  sigh  io 
heavily  and  walk  away,  bearing  my  responsibility  as 
best  I  could,  and  this  of  course  I  confided  to  no  one, 
for  there  is  something  too  mysterious  in  the  burden  of 
“the  winds  that  come  from  the  fields  of  sleep”0  to  be 
communicated,  although  it  is  at  the  same  time  too  1 5 
heavy  a  burden  to  be  borne  alone. 

My  great  veneration  and  pride  in  my  father  mani¬ 
fested  itself  in  curious  ways.  On  several  Sundays, 
doubtless  occurring  in  two  or  three  different  years,  the 
Union  Sunday  School  of  the  village  was  visited  by  2d 
strangers,  some  of  those  “strange  people”  who  live 
outside  a  child’s  realm,  yet  constantly  thrill  it  by  their 
close  approach.  My  father  taught  the  large  Bible  class 
in  the  left-hand  corner  of  the  church  next  to  the  pulpit, 
and  to  my  eyes  at  least,  was  a  most  imposing  figure  in  25 
his  Sunday  frock  coat,  his  fine  head  rising  high  above  all 
the  others.  I  imagined  that  the  strangers  were  filled 
with  admiration  for  this  dignified  person,  and  I  prayed 


6 


TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


with  all  my  heart  that  the  ugly,  pigeon-toed  little  girl, 
whose  crooked  back  obliged  her  to  walk  with  her  head 
held  very  much  upon  one  side,  would  never  be  pointed 
out  to  these  visitors  as  the  daughter  of  this  fine  man. 
s  In  order  to  lessen  the  possibility  of  a  connection  being 
made,  on  these  particular  Sundays  I  did  not  walk  beside 
my  father,  although  this  walk  was  the  great  event  of  the 
week,  but  attached  myself  firmly  to  the  side  of  my 
Uncle  James  Addams,  in  the  hope  that  I  should  be 
o  mistaken  for  his  child,  or  at  least  that  I  should  not  re¬ 
main  so  conspicuously  unattached  that  troublesome 
questions  might  identify  an  Ugly  Duckling  with  her 
imposing  parent.  My  uncle,  who  had  many  children  of 
his  own,  must  have  been  mildly  surprised  at  this  un- 
5  wonted  attention,  but  he  would  look  down  kindly  at  me, 
and  say,  “So  you  are  going  to  walk  with  me  to-day?” 
“Yes,  please,  Uncle  James,”  would  be  my  meek  reply. 
He  fortunately  never  explored  my  motives,  nor  do  I 
remember  that  my  father  ever  did,  so  that  in  all  proba- 
o  bility  my  machinations  have  been  safe  from  public 
knowledge  until  this  hour. 

It  is  hard  to  account  for  the  manifestations  of  a 
child’s  adoring  afFection,  so  emotional,  so  irrational,  so 
tangled  with  the  affairs  of  the  imagination.  I  simply 
5  could  not  endure  the  thought  that  “strange  people” 
should  know  that  my  handsome  father  owned  this 
homely  little  girl.  But  even  in  my  chivalric  desire  to 
protect  him  from  his  fate,  I  was  not  quite  easy  in  the 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS  7 

sacrifice  of  my  uncle,  although  I  quieted  my  scruples 
with  the  reflection  that  the  contrast  was  less  marked 
and  that,  anyway,  his  own  little  girl  “was  not  so  very 
pretty.”  I  do  not  know  that  I  commonly  dwelt  much 
upon  my  personal  appearance,  save  as  it  thrust  itself  as  5 
an  incongruity  into  my  father’s  life,  and  in  spite  of 
unending  evidence  to  the  contrary,  there  were  even 
black  moments  when  I  allowed  myself  to  speculate  as 
to  whether  he  might  not  share  the  feeling.  Happily, 
however,  this  specter  was  laid  before  it  had  time  to  1 
grow  into  a  morbid  familiar  by  a  very  trifling  incident. 
One  day  I  met  my  father  coming  out  of  his  bank  on  the 
main  street  of  the  neighboring  city  which  seemed  to  me 
a  veritable  whirlpool  of  society  and  commerce.  With  a 
playful  touch  of  exaggeration,  he  lifted  his  high  and  1 
shining  silk  hat  and  made  me  an  imposing  bow.  This 
distinguished  public  recognition,  this  totally  unneces¬ 
sary  identification  among  a  mass  of  “strange  people” 
who  couldn’t  possibly  know  unless  he  himself  made  the 
sign,  suddenly  filled  me  with  a  sense  of  the  absurdity  of  2 
the  entire  feeling.  It  may  not  even  then  have  seemed  as 
absurd  as  it  really  was,  but  at  least  it  seemed  enough  so 
to  collapse  or  to  pass  into  the  limbo  of  forgotten  specters. 

I  made  still  other  almost  equally  grotesque  attempts 
to  express  this  doglike  affection.  The  house  at  the  end  2 
of  the  village  in  which  I  was  born,  and  which  was  my 
home  until  I  moved  to  Hull-House,  in  my  earliest  child¬ 
hood  had  opposite  to  it-— only  across  the  road  and  then 


8 


TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


across  a  little  stretch  of  greensward — two  mills  belong¬ 
ing  to  my  father;  one  flour  mill,  to  which  the  various 
grains  were  brought  by  the  neighboring  farmers,  and 
one  sawmill,  in  which  the  logs  of  the  native  timber  were 
5  sawed  into  lumber.  The  latter  offered  the  great  excite¬ 
ment  of  sitting  on  a  log  while  it  slowly  approached  the 
buzzing  saw  which  was  cutting  it  into  slabs,  and  of 
getting  off  just  in  time  to  escape  a  sudden  and  gory 
death.  But  the  flouring  mill  was  much  more  beloved, 
dt  was  full  of  dusky,  floury  places  which  we  adored,  of 
empty  bins  in  which  we  might  play  house;  it  had  a 
basement,  with  piles  of  bran  and  shorts  which  were 
almost  as  good  as  sand  to  play  in,  whenever  the  miller 
let  us  wet  the  edges  of  the  pile  with  water  brought  in  his 
5  sprinkling  pot  from  the  mill-race. 

In  addition  to  these  fascinations  was  the  association 
of  the  mill  with  my  father’s  activities,  for  doubtless  at 
that  time  I  centered  upon  him  all  that  careful  imitation 
which  a  little  girl  ordinarily  gives  to  her  mother’s  ways 
o  and  habits.  My  mother  had  died  when  I  was  a  baby 
and  my  father’s  second  marriage  did  not  occur  until  my 
eighth  year. 

I  had  a  consuming  ambition  to  possess  a  miller’s 
thumb,  and  would  sit  contentedly  for  a  long  time  rub- 
5  bing  between  my  thumb  and  fingers  the  ground  wheat 
as  it  fell  from  between  the  millstones,  before  it  was 
taken  up  on  an  endless  chain  of  mysterious  little  buckets 
to  be  bolted  into  flour.  1  believe  I  have  never  since 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS 


9 


wanted  anything  more  desperately  than  I  wanted  my 
right  thumb  to  be  flattened,  as  my  father’s  had  become, 
during  his  earlier  years  of  a  miller’s  life.  Somewhat 
discouraged  by  the  slow  process  of  structural  modifica¬ 
tion,  I  also  took  measures  to  secure  on  the  backs  of  my  5 
hands  the  tiny  purple  and  red  spots  which  are  always 
found  on  the  hands  of  the  miller  who  dresses  millstones. 
The  marks  on  my  father’s  hands  had  grown  faint,  but 
were  quite  visible  when  looked  for,  and  seemed  to  me  so 
desirable  that  they  must  be  procured  at  all  costs.  Even  1 
when  playing  in  our  house  or  yard,  I  could  always  tell 
when  the  millstones  were  being  dressed,  because  the 
rumbling  of  the  mill  then  stopped,  and  there  were  few 
pleasures  I  would  not  instantly  forego,  rushing  at  once 
to  the  mill,  that  I  might  spread  out  my  hands  near  the  1 
millstones  in  the  hope  that  the  little  hard  flints  flying 
from  the  miller’s  chisel  would  light  upon  their  backs  and 
make  the  longed-for  marks.  I  used  hotly  to  accuse  the 
German  miller,  my  dear  friend  Ferdinand,  “of  trying 
not  to  hit  my  hands,”  but  he  scornfully  replied  that  he  2 
could  not  hit  them  if  he  did  try,  and  that  they  were  too 
little  to  be  of  use  in  a  mill  anyway.  Although  I  hated 
his  teasing,  I  never  had  the  courage  to  confess  my  real 
purpose. 

This  sincere  tribute  of  imitation  which  affection  2 
offers  to  its  adored  object,  had  later,  I  hope,  subtler 
manifestations,  but  certainly  these  first  ones  were  alto¬ 
gether  genuine.  In  this  case,  too,  I  doubtless  contrib- 


io  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


uted  my  share  to  that  stream  of  admiration  which  our 
generation  so  generously  poured  forth  for  the  self-made 
man.  I  was  consumed  by  a  wistful  desire  to  apprehend 
the  hardships  of  my  father’s  earlier  life  in  that  far-away 
5  time  when  he  had  been  a  miller’s  apprentice.  I  knew 
that  he  still  woke  up  punctually  at  three  o’clock,  be¬ 
cause  for  so  many  years  he  had  taken  his  turn  at  the 
mill  in  the  early  morning,  and  if  by  chance  I  awoke  at 
the  same  hour,  as  curiously  enough  I  often  did,  I 
o  imagined  him  in  the  early  dawn  in  my  uncle’s  old  mill 
reading  through  the  entire  village  library,  book  after 
book,  beginning  with  the  lives  of  the  signers  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  Copies  of  the  same  books, 
mostly  bound  in  calfskin,  were  to  be  found  in  the  library 
s  below,  and  I  courageously  resolved  that  I  too  would 
read  them  all  and  try  to  understand  life  as  he  did.  I 
did  in  fact  later  begin  a  course  of  reading  in  the  early 
morning  hours,  but  I  was  caught  by  some  fantastic 
notion  of  chronological  order  and  early  legendary  form, 
o  Pope’s  translation  of  the  “Iliad,”  even  followed  by 
Dryden’s  “Virgil,”  did  not  leave  behind  the  residuum 
of  wisdom  for  which  I  longed,  and  I  finally  gave  them 
up  for  a  thick  book  entitled  “  The  History  of  the  World  ” 
as  affording  a  shorter  and  an  easier  path, 
s  Although  I  constantly  confided  my  sins  and  per¬ 
plexities  to  my  father,  there  are  only  a  few  occasions  on 
which  I  remember  having  received  direct  advice  or 
admonition;  it  may  easily  be  true,  however,  that  I  have 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS 


1 1 


forgotten  the  latter,  in  the  manner  of  many  seekers 
after  advice  who  enjoyably  set  forth  their  situation  but 
do  not  really  listen  to  the  advice  itself.  I  can  remember 
an  admonition  on  one  occasion,  however,  when,  as  a 
little  girl  of  eight  years,  arrayed  in  a  new  cloak,  gorgeous  5 
beyond  anything  I  had  ever  worn  before,  I  stood  before 
my  father  for  his  approval.  I  was  much  chagrined  by 
his  remark  that  it  was  a  very  pretty  cloak — in  fact  so 
much  prettier  than  any  cloak  the  other  little  girls  in  the 
Sunday  School  had,  that  he  would  advise  me  to  wear  1 
my  old  cloak,  which  wTould  keep  me  quite  as  warm,  with 
the  added  advantage  of  not  making  the  other  little  girls 
feel  badly.  I  complied  with  the  request  but  I  fear  with¬ 
out  inner  consent,  and  I  certainly  was  quite  without  the 
joy  of  self-sacrifice  as  I  walked  soberly  through  the  1 
village  street  by  the  side  of  my  counselor.  My  mind  was 
busy,  however,  with  the  old  question  eternally  suggested 
by  the  inequalities  of  the  human  lot.  Only  as  we  neared 
the  church  door  did  I  venture  to  ask  what  could  be 
done  about  it,  receiving  the  reply  that  it  might  never  2 
be  righted  so  far  as  clothes  went,  but  that  people  might 
be  equal  in  things  that  mattered  much  more  than  clothes, 
the  affairs  of  education  and  religion,  for  instance,  which 
we  attended  to  when  we  went  to  school  and  church,  and 
that  it  was  very  stupid  to  wear  the  sort  of  clothes  that  2 
made  it  harder  to  have  equality  even  there. 

It  must  have  been  a  little  later  when  I  held  a  con¬ 
versation  with  my  father  upon  the  doctrine  of  fore- 


12 


TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


ordination,  which  at  one  time  very  much  perplexed  my 
childish  mind.  After  setting  the  difficulty  before  him 
and  complaining  that  I  could  not  make  it  out,  although 
my  best  friend  “ understood  it  perfectly,”  I  settled 
down  to  hear  his  argument,  having  no  doubt  tb&t  he 
could  make  it  quite  clear.  To  my  delighted  surprise, 
for  any  intimation  that  our  minds  were  on  an  equality 
lifted  me  high  indeed,  he  said  that  he  feared  that  he  and 
I  did  not  have  the  kind  of  mind  that  would  ever  under¬ 
stand  foreordinarion  very  well  and  advised  me  not  to 
give  too  much  time  to  it;  but  he  then  proceeded  to  say 
other  things  of  which  the  final  impression  left  upon  my 
mind  was,  that  it  did  not  matter  much  whether  one 
understood  foreordination  or  not,  but  that  it  was  very 
important  not  to  pretend  to  understand  what  you 
didn’t  understand  and  that  you  must  always  be  honest 
with  yourself  inside,  whatever  happened.  Perhaps  on 
the  whole  as  valuable  a  lesson  as  the  Shorter  Catechism0 
itself  contains. 

My  memory  merges  this  early  conversation  on  re¬ 
ligious  doctrine  into  one  which  took  place  years  later 
when  I  put  before  my  father  the  situation  in  which  I 
found  myself  at  boarding  school  when  under  great 
evangelical  pressure,  and  once  again  I  heard  his  testi¬ 
mony  in  favor  of  “mental  integrity  above  everything 
else.” 

At  the  time  we  were  driving  through  a  piece  of  timber 
in  which  the  wood  choppers  had  been  at  work  during 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS 


13 


the  winter,  and  so  earnestly  were  we  talking  that  he 
suddenly  drew  up  the  horses  to  find  that  he  did  not 
know  where  he  was.  We  were  both  entertained  by  the 
incident,  I  that  my  father  had  been  “lost  in  his  own 
tim’cfer”  so  that  various  cords  of  wood  must  have 
escaped  his  practiced  eye,  and  he  on  his  side  that  he 
should  have  become  so  absorbed  in  this  maze  of  youth¬ 
ful  speculation.  We  were  in  high  spirits  as  we  emerged 
from  the  tender  green  of  the  spring  woods  into  the  clear 
light  of  day,  and  as  we  came  back  into  the  main  road  I 
categorically  asked  him: — 

“What  are  you?  What  do  you  say  when  people  ask 
you?” 

His  eyes  twinkled  a  little  as  he  soberly  replied: 

“I  am  a  Quaker.” 

“But  that  isn’t  enough  to  say,”  I  urged. 

“Very  well,”  he  added,  “to  people  who  insist  upon 
details,  as  some  one  is  doing  now,  I  add  that  I  am  a 
Hicksite  Quaker;  ”  and  not  another  word  on  the  weighty 
subject  could  I  induce  him  to  utter. 

These  early  recollections  are  set  in  a  scene  of  rural 
beauty,  unusual  at  least  for  Illinois.  The  prairie  round 
the  village  was  broken  into  hills,  one  of  them  crowned 
by  pine  woods,  grown  up  from  a  bagful  of  Norway  pine 
seeds  sown  by  my  father  in  1844,  the  very  year  he  came 
to  Illinois,  a  testimony  perhaps  that  the  most  vigorous 
pioneers  gave  at  least  an  occasional  thought  to  beauty. 
The  banks  of  the  mill  stream  rose  into  high  bluffs  too 


i4  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

perpendicular  to  be  climbed  without  skill,  and  contain¬ 
ing  caves  of  which  one  at  least  was  so  black  that  it 
could  not  be  explored  without  the  aid  of  a  candle;  and 
there  was  a  deserted  limekiln  which  became  associated 
s  in  my  mind  with  the  unpardonable  sin  of  Hawthorne’s 
“  Lime-Burner.”0  My  stepbrother  and  I  carried  on 
games  and  crusades  which  lasted  week  after  week,  and 
even  summer  after  summer,  as  only  free-ranging  coun¬ 
try  children  can  do.  It  may  be  in  contrast  to  this  that 
ioone  of  the  most  piteous  aspects  in  the  life  of  city  chil¬ 
dren,  as  I  have  seen  it  in  the  neighborhood  of  Hull- 
House,  is  the  constant  interruption  to  their  play  which 
is  inevitable  on  the  streets,  so  that  it  can  never  have  any 
continuity, —  the  most  elaborate  “plan  or  chart”  or 
15  “fragment  from  their  dream  of  human  life”  is  sure  to 
be  rudely  destroyed  by  the  passing  traffic.  Although 
they  start  over  and  over  again,  even  the  most  vivacious 
become  worn  out  at  last  and  take  to  that  passive  “stand¬ 
ing  ’round”  varied  by  rude  horse-play,  which  in  time 
20  becomes  so  characteristic  of  city  children. 

We  had  of  course  our  favorite  places  and  trees  and 
birds  and  flowers.  It  is  hard  to  reproduce  the  com¬ 
panionship  which  children  establish  with  nature,  but 
certainly  it  is  much  too  unconscious  and  intimate  to 
2  5  come  under  the  head  of  aesthetic  appreciation  or  any¬ 
thing  of  the  sort.  When  we  said  that  the  purple  wind¬ 
flowers —  the  anemone  pattens  —  “looked  as  if  the 
winds  had  made  them,”  we  thought  much  more  of  the 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS 


IS 

fact  that  they  were  wind-born  than  that  they  were 
beautiful:  we  clapped  our  hands  in  sudden  joy  over  the 
soft  radiance  of  the  rainbow,  but  its  enchantment  lay 
in  our  half  belief  that  a  pot  of  gold  was  to  be  found  at 
its  farther  end;  we  yielded  to  a  soft  melancholy  when  5 
we  heard  the  whippoorwill  in  the  early  twilight,  but 
while  he  aroused  in  us  vague  longings  of  which  we  spoke 
solemnly,  we  felt  no  beauty  in  his  call. 

We  erected  an  altar  beside  the  stream,  to  which  for 
several  years  we  brought  all  the  snakes  we  killed  during  10 
our  excursions,  no  matter  how  long  the  toilsome  journey 
which  we  had  to  make  with  a  limp  snake  dangling  be¬ 
tween  two  sticks.  I  remember  rather  vaguely  the 
ceremonial  performed -upon  this  altar  one  autumn  day, 
when  we  brought  as  further  tribute  one  out  of  every  15 
hundred  of  the  black  walnuts  which  we  had  gathered, 
and  then  poured  over  the  whole  a  pitcherful  of  cider, 
fresh  from  the  cider  mill  on  the  barn  floor.  I  think  we 
had  also  burned  a  favorite  book  or  two  upon  this  pyre  of 
stones.  The  entire  affair  carried  on  with  such  solemnity  20 
was  probably  the  result  of  one  of  those  imperative  im¬ 
pulses  under  whose  compulsion  children  seek  a  cere¬ 
monial  which  shall  express  their  sense  of  identification 
with  man’s  primitive  life  and  their  familiar  kinship  with 
the  remotest  past.  25 

Long  before  we  had  begun  the  study  of  Latin  at  the 
village  school,  my  brother  and  I  had  learned  the  Lord’s 
Prayer  in  Latin  out  of  an  old  copy  of  the  Vulgate,0  and 


1 6  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


gravely  repeated  it  every  night  in  an  execrable  pro¬ 
nunciation  because  it  seemed  to  us  more  religious  than 
“ plain  English." 

When,  however,  I  really  prayed,  what  I  saw  before 
s  my  eyes  was  a  most  outrageous  picture  which  adorned 
a  song-book  used  in  Sunday  School,  portraying  the 
Lord  upon  His  throne  surrounded  by  tiers  and  tiers  of 
saints  and  angels  all  in  a  blur  of  yellow.  I  am  ashamed 
to  tell  how  old  I  was  when  that  picture  ceased  to  appear 
o  before  my  eyes,  especially  when  moments  of  terror  com¬ 
pelled  me  to  ask  protection  from  the  heavenly  powers. 

I  recall  with  great  distinctness  my  first  direct  contact 
with  death  when  I  was  fifteen  years  old:  Polly  was  an 
old  nurse  who  had  taken  care  of  my  mother  and  had 
5  followed  her  to  frontier  Illinois  to  help  rear  a  second 
generation  of  children.  She  had  always  lived  in  our 
house,  but  made  annual  visits  to  her  cousins  on  a  farm 
a  few  miles  north  of  the  village.  During  one  of  these 
visits,  word  came  to  us  one  Sunday  evening  that  Polly 
owas  dying,  and  for  a  number  of  reasons  I  was  the  only 
person  able  to  go  to  her.  I  left  the  lamp-lit,  warm  house 
to  be  driven  four  miles  through  a  blinding  storm  which 
every  minute  added  more  snow  to  the  already  high 
drifts,  with  a  sense  of  starting  upon  a  fateful  errand, 
s  An  hour  after  my  arrival  all  of  the  cousin’s  family  went 
downstairs  to  supper,  and  I  was  left  alone  to  watch  with 
Polly.  The  square,  old-fashioned  chamber  in  the  lonely 
farmhouse  was  very  cold  and  still,  with  nothing  to  be 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS 


1 7 

heard  but  the  storm  outside.  Suddenly  the  great  change 
came.  I  heard  a  feeble  call  of  “Sarah,”  my  mother’s 
name,  as  the  dying  eyes  were  turned  upon  me,  followed 
by  a  curious  breathing  and  in  place  of  the  face  familiar 
from  my  earliest  childhood  and  associated  with  homely 
household  cares,  there  lay  upon  the  pillow  strange, 
august  features,  stern  and  withdrawn  from  all  the  small 
affairs  of  life.  That  sense  of  solitude,  of  being  un¬ 
sheltered  in  a  wfide  world  of  relentless  and  elemental 
forces  which  is  at  the  basis  of  childhood’s  timidity  and 
which  is  far  from  outgrown  at  fifteen,  seized  me  ir¬ 
resistibly  before  I  could  reach  the  narrow  stairs  and 
summon  the  family  from  below. 

As  I  was  driven  home  in  the  winter  storm,  the  wind 
through  the  trees  seemed  laden  with  a  passing  soul  and 
the  riddle  of  life  and  death  pressed  hard;  once  to  be 
young,  to  grow  old  and  to  die,  everything  came  to  that, 
and  then  a  mysterious  journey  out  into  the  Unknown. 
Did  she  mind  faring  forth  alone?  Would  the  journey 
perhaps  end  in  something  as  familiar  and  natural  to  the 
aged  and  dying  as  life  is  to  the  young  and  living? 
Through  all  the  drive  and  indeed  throughout  the  night 
these  thoughts  were  pierced  by  sharp  worry,  a  sense  of 
faithlessness  because  I  had  forgotten  the  text  Polly  had 
confided  to  me  long  before  as  the  one  from  which  she 
wished  her  funeral  sermon  to  be  preached.  My  comfort 
as  usual  finally  came  from  my  father,  who  pointed  out 
what  was  essential  and  what  was  of  little  avail  even  in 


1 8  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


such  a  moment  as  this,  and  while  he  was  much  too  wise 
to  grow  dogmatic  upon  the  great  theme  of  death,  I  felt 
a  new  fellowship  with  him  because  we  had  discussed  it 
together. 

5  Perhaps  I  may  record  here  my  protest  against  the 
efforts,  so  often  made,  to  shield  children  and  young 
people  from  all  that  has  to  do  with  death  and  sorrow,  to 
give  them  a  good  time  at  all  hazards  on  the  assumption 
that  the  ills  of  life  will  come  soon  enough.  Young  people 
o  themselves  often  resent  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  their 
elders;  they  feel  set  aside  and  belittled  as  if  they  were 
denied  the  common  human  experiences.  They  too  wish 
to  climb  steep  stairs  and  to  eat  their  bread  with  tears, 
and  they  imagine  that  the  problems  of  existence  which 
5  so  press  upon  them  in  pensive  moments  would  be  less 
insoluble  in  the  light  of  these  great  happenings. 

An  incident  which  stands  out  clearly  in  my  mind  as 
an  exciting  suggestion  of  the  great  world  of  moral  enter¬ 
prise  and  serious  undertakings  must  have  occurred 
o  earlier  than  this,  for  in  1872,  when  I  was  not  yet  twelve 
years  old,  I  came  into  my  father’s  room  one  morning  to 
find  him  sitting  beside  the  fire  with  a  newspaper  in  his 
hand,  looking  very  solemn;  and  upon  my  eager  inquiry 
what  had  happened,  he  told  me  that  Joseph  Mazzini0 
5  was  dead.  I  had  never  even  heard  Mazzini’s  name,  and 
after  being  told  about  him  I  was  inclined  to  grow 
argumentative,  asserting  that  my  father  did  not  know 
him,  that  lie  was  not  an  American,  and  that  I  could  not 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS 


19 


understand  why  we  should  be  expected  to  feel  badly 
about  him.  It  is  impossible  to  recall  the  conversation 
with  the  complete  breakdown  of  my  cheap  arguments, 
hut  in  the  end  I  obtained  that  which  I  have  ever  re¬ 
garded  as  a  valuable  possession,  a  sense  of  the  genuine  5 
relationship  which  may  exist  between  men  who  share 
large  hopes  and  like  desires,  even  though  they  differ  in 
nationality,  language,  and  creed;  that  those  things 
count  for  absolutely  nothing  between  groups  of  men 
who  are  trying  to  abolish  slavery  in  America  or  to  throw  1 
off  Hapsburg0  oppression  in  Italy.  At  any  rate,  I  was 
heartily  ashamed  of  my  meager  notion  of  patriotism, 
and  I  came  out  of  the  room  exhilarated  with  the  con¬ 
sciousness  that  impersonal  and  international  relations 
are  actual  facts  and  not  mere  phrases.  I  was  filled  with  1 
pride  that  I  knew  a  man  who  held  converse  with  great 
minds  and  who  really  sorrowed  and  rejoiced  over 
happenings  across  the  sea.  I  never  recall  those  early 
conversations  with  my  father,  nor  a  score  of  others  like 
them,  but  there  comes  into  my  mind  a  line  from  Mrs.  2 
Browning  in  which  a  daughter  describes  her  relations 
with  her  father: — 

“He  wrapt  me  in  his  large 
Man’s  doublet,  careless  did  it  fit  or  no.” 


CHAPTER  II 
Influence  of  Lincoln 

I  suppose  all  the  children  who  were  born  about  the 
time  of  the  Civil  War  have  recollections  quite  unlike 
those  of  the  children  who  are  living  now.  Although  I 
was  but  four  and  a  half  years  old  when  Lincoln  died,  I 
5  distinctly  remember  the  day  when  I  found  on  our  two 
white  gate  posts  American  flags  companioned  with 
black.  I  tumbled  down  on  the  harsh  gravel  walk  in  my 
eager  rush  into  the  house  to  inquire  what  they  were 
“ there  for.”  To  my  amazement  I  found  my  father  in 
i  o  tears,  something  that  I  had  never  seen  before,  having 
assumed,  as  all  children  do,  that  grown-up  people  never 
cried.  The  two  flags,  my  father’s  tears  and  his  im¬ 
pressive  statement  that  the  greatest  man  in  the  world 
had  died,  constituted  my  initiation,  my  baptism,  as  it 
1 5  were,  into  the  thrilling  and  solemn  interests  of  a  world 
lying  quite  outside  the  two  white  gate  posts.  The  great 
war  touched  children  in  many  ways:  I  remember  an 
engraved  roster  of  names,  headed  by  the  words  “Ad- 
dams’  Guard,”  and  the  whole  surmounted  by  the  in- 
20  signia  of  the  American  eagle  clutching  many  flags, 
which  always  hung  in  the  family  living-room.  As  chil¬ 
dren  we  used  to  read  this  list  of  names  again  and  again. 


20 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 


21 


We  could  reach  it  only  by  dint  of  putting  the  family 
Bible  on  a  chair  and  piling  the  dictionary  on  top  of  it; 
using  the  Bible  to  stand  on  was  always  accompanied  by 
a  little  thrill  of  superstitious  awe,  although  we  carefully 
put  the  dictionary  above  that  our  profane  feet  might 
touch  it  alone.  Having  brought  the  roster  within  reach 
of  our  eager  fingers,  —  fortunately  it  was  glazed,  —  we 
would  pick  out  the  names  of  those  who  “had  fallen  on 
the  field”  from  those  who  “had  come  back  from  the 
war,”  and  from  among  the  latter  those  whose  children 
were  our  schoolmates.  When  drives  were  planned,  we 
would  say,  “Let  us  take  this  road,”  that  we  might  pass 
the  farm  where  a  soldier  had  once  lived;  if  flowers  from 
the  garden  were  to  be  given  away,  we  would  want  them 
to  go  to  the  mother  of  one  of  those  heroes  whose  names 
we  knew  from  the  “Addams’  Guard.”  If  a  guest  should 
become  interested  in  the  roster  on  the  wall,  he  was  at 
once  led  by  the  eager  children  to  a  small  picture  of 
Colonel  Davis  which  hung  next  the  opposite  window, 
that  he  might  see  the  brave  Colonel  of  the  Regiment. 
The  introduction  to  the  picture  of  the  one-armed  man 
seemed  to  us  a  very  solemn  ceremony,  and  long  after  the 
guest  was  tired  of  listening,  we  would  tell  each  other  all 
about  the  local  hero,  who  at  the  head  of  his  troops  had 
suffered  wounds  unto  death.  We  liked  very  much  to 
talk  to  a  gentle  old  lady  who  lived  in  a  white  farmhouse 
a  mile  north  of  the  village.  She  was  the  mother  of  the 
village  hero,  Tommy,  and  used  to  tell  us  of  her  long 


22  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


anxiety  during  the  spring  of  ’62;  how  she  waited  day 
after  day  for  the  hospital  to  surrender  up  her  son,  each 
morning  airing  the  white  homespun  sheets  and  holding 
the  little  bedroom  in  immaculate  readiness.  It  was 
s  after  the  battle  of  Fort  Donelson  that  Tommy  was 
wounded  and  had  been  taken  to  the  hospital  at  Spring- 
field;  his  father  went  down  to  him  and  saw  him  getting 
worse  each  week,  until  it  was  clear  that  he  was  going  to 
die;  but  there  was  so  much  red  tape  about  the  depart- 
oment,  and  affairs  were  so  confused,  that  his  discharge 
could  not  be  procured.  At  last  the  hospital  surgeon 
intimated  to  his  father  that  he  should  quietly  take  him 
away;  a  man  as  sick  as  that,  it  would  be  all  right;  but 
when  they  told  Tommy,  weak  as  he  was,  his  eyes 
s  flashed,  and  he  said,  “No,  sir;  I  will  go  out  of  the  front 
door  or  Ell  die  here.  ”  Of  course  after  that  every  man  in 
the  hospital  worked  for  it,  and  in  two  weeks  he  was 
honorably  discharged.  When  he  came  home  at  last,  his 
mother’s  heart  was  broken  to  see  him  so  wan  and 
o  changed.  She  would  tell  us  of  the  long  quiet  days  that 
followed  his  return,  with  the  windows  open  that  the 
dying  eyes  might  look  over  the  orchard  slope  to  the 
meadow  beyond  where  the  younger  brothers  were  mow¬ 
ing  the  early  hay.  She  told  us  of  those  days  when  his 
5  school  friends  from  the  Academy  flocked  in  to  see^him, 
their  old  acknowledged  leader,  and  of  the  burning  words 
of  earnest  patriotism  spoken  in  the  crowded  little  room, 
so  that  in  three  months  the  Academy  was  almost  de- 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 


23 


serted  and  the  new  Company  who  marched  away  in  the 
autumn  took  as  drummer  boy  Tommy’s  third  brother, 
who  was  only  seventeen  and  too  young  for  a  regular. 
She  remembered  the  still  darker  days  that  followed, 
when  the  bright  drummer  boy  was  in  Andersonville 
prison,  and  little  by  little  she  learned  to  be  reconciled 
that  Tommy  was  safe  in  the  peaceful  home  graveyard. 

However  much  we  were  given  to  talk  of  war  heroes, 
we  always  fell  silent  as  we  approached  an  isolated  farm¬ 
house  in  which  two  old  people  lived  alone.  Five  of  their 
sons  had  enlisted  in  the  Civil  War,  and  only  the  young¬ 
est  had  returned  alive  in  the  spring  of  1865.  In  the 
autumn  of  the  same  year,  when  he  was  hunting  for  wild 
ducks  in  a  swamp  on  the  rough  little  farm  itself,  he  was 
accidentally  shot  and  killed,  and  the  old  people  were 
left  alone  to  struggle  with  the  half-cleared  land  as  best 
they  might.  When  we  were  driven  past  this  forlorn 
little  farm  our  childish  voices  always  dropped  into 
speculative  whisperings  as  to  how  the  accident  could 
have  happened  to  this  remaining  son  out  of  all  the  men 
in  the  world,  to  him  who  had  escaped  so  many  chances 
of  death!  Our  young  hearts  swelled  in  first  rebellion 
against  that  which  Walter  Pater0  calls  “the  inexplicable 
shortcoming  or  misadventure  on  the  part  of  life  itself”; 
we  were  overwhelmingly  oppressed  by  that  grief  of 
things  as  they  are,  so  much  more  mysterious  and  in¬ 
tolerable  than  those  griefs  which  we  think  dimly  to  trace 
to  man’s  own  wrongdoing. 


24  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

It  was  well  perhaps  that  life  thus  early  gave  me  a 
hint  of  one  of  her  most  obstinate  and  insoluble  riddles, 
for  I  have  sorely  needed  the  sense  of  universality  thus 
imparted  to  that  mysterious  injustice,  the  burden  of 
5  which  we  are  all  forced  to  bear  and  with  which  I  have 
become  only  too  familiar. 

My  childish  admiration  for  Lincoln  is  closely  associ¬ 
ated  with  a  visit  made  to  the  war  eagle,  Old  Abe,  who, 
as  we  children  well  knew,  lived  in  the  state  capitol  of 
o  Wisconsin,  only  sixty-five  miles  north  of  our  house, 
really  no  farther  than  an  eagle  could  easily  fly!  He  had 
been  carried  by  the  Eighth  Wisconsin  Regiment  through 
the  entire  war,  and  now  dwelt  an  honored  pensioner  in 
the  state  building  itself. 

s  Many  times,  standing  in  the  north  end  of  our  orchard, 
which  was  only  twelve  miles  from  that  mysterious  line 
which  divided  Illinois  from  Wisconsin,  we  anxiously 
scanned  the  deep  sky,  hoping  to  see  Old  Abe  fly  south¬ 
ward  right  over  our  apple  trees,  for  it  was  clearly  possi- 
oble  that  he  might  at  any  moment  escape  from  his 
keeper,  who,  although  he  had  been  a  soldier  and  a 
sentinel,  would  have  to  sleep  sometimes.  We  gazed 
with  thrilled  interest  at  one  speck  after  another  in  the 
flawless  sky,  but  although  Old  Abe  never  came  to  see  us, 
5  a  much  more  incredible  thing  happened,  for  we  were  at 
last  taken  to  see  him. 

We  started  one  golden  summer’s  day,  two  happy 
children  in  the  family  carriage,  with  my  father  and 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 


25 


mother  and  an  older  sister  to  whom,  because  she  was 
just  home  from  boarding  school,  we  confidently  ap¬ 
pealed  whenever  we  needed  information.  We  were 
driven  northward  hour  after  hour,  past  harvest  fields  in 
which  the  stubble  glinted  from  bronze  to  gold  and  the  5 
heavy-headed  grain  rested  luxuriously  in  rounded 
shocks,  until  we  reached  that  beautiful  region  of  hills 
and  lakes  which  surrounds  the  capital  city  of  Wisconsin. 

But  although  Old  Abe,  sitting  sedately  upon  his  high 
perch,  was  sufficiently  like  an  uplifted  ensign  to  remind  10 
us  of  a  Roman  eagle,  and  although  his  veteran  keeper, 
clad  in  an  old  army  coat,  was  ready  to  answer  all  our 
questions  and  to  tell  us  of  the  thirty-six  battles  and 
skirmishes  through  which  Old  Abe  had  passed  un¬ 
scathed,  the  crowning  moment  of  the  impressive  journey  1 5 
came  to  me  later,  illustrating  once  more  that  children 
are  as  quick  to  catch  the  meaning  of  a  symbol  as  they 
are  unaccountably  slow  to  understand  the  real  world 
about  them. 

The  entire  journey  to  the  veteran  war  eagle  had  itself  20 
symbolized  that  search  for  the  heroic  and  perfect  which 
so  persistently  haunts  the  young;  and  as  I  stood  under 
the  great  white  dome  of  Old  Abe’s  stately  home,  for  one 
brief  moment  the  search  was  rewarded.  I  dimly  caught 
a  hint  of  what  men  have  tried  to  say  in  their  world-old  25 
effort  to  imprison  a  space  in  so  divine  a  line  that  it  shall 
hold  only  yearning  devotion  and  high-hearted  hopes. 
Certainly  the  utmost  rim  of  my  first  dome  was  filled 


26  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-MOUSE 


with  the  tumultuous  impression  of  soldiers  marching  to 
death  for  freedom’s  sake,  of  pioneers  streaming  west¬ 
ward  to  establish  self-government  in  yet  another  sover¬ 
eign  state.  Only  the  great  dome  of  St.  Peter’s  itself  has 
sever  clutched  my  heart  as  did  that  modest  curve  which 
had  sequestered  from  infinitude  in  a  place  small  enough 
for  my  child’s  mind,  the  courage  and  endurance  which  I 
could  not  comprehend  so  long  as  it  was  lost  in  “the  void 
of  unresponsive  space”  under  the  vaulting  sky  itself, 
o  But  through  all  my  vivid  sensations  there  persisted  the 
image  of  the  eagle  in  the  corridor  below  and  Lincoln 
himself  as  an  epitome  of  all  that  was  great  and  good.  I 
dimly  caught  the  notion  of  the  martyred  President  as 
the  standard  bearer  to  the  conscience  of  his  country- 
5  men,  as  the  eagle  had  been  the  ensign  of  courage  to  the 
soldiers  of  the  Wisconsin  regiment. 

Thirty-five  years  later,  as  I  stood  on  the  hill  campus 
of  the  University  of  Wisconsin  with  a  commanding  view 
of  the  capitol  building  a  mile  directly  across  the  city,  I 
osaw  again  the  dome  which  had  so  uplifted  my  childish 
spirit.  The  University,  which  was  celebrating  its 
fiftieth  anniversary,  had  honored  me  with  a  doctor’s 
degree,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  academic  pomp  and  the 
rejoicing,  the  dome  again  appeared  to  me  as  a  fitting 
s  symbol  of  a  state’s  aspiration  even  in  its  high  mission  of 
universal  education. 

Thousands  of  children  in  the  sixties  and  seventies,  in 
the  simplicity  which  is  given  to  the  understanding  of  a 


27 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 

child,  caught  a  notion  of  imperishable  heroism  when 
they  were  told  that  brave  men  had  lost  their  lives  that 
the  slaves  might  be  free.  At  any  moment  the  conversa¬ 
tion  of  our  elders  might  turn  upon  these  heroic  events; 
there  were  red-letter  days,  when  a  certain  general  came  5 
to  see  my  father,  and  again  when  Governor  Oglesby,0 
whom  all  Illinois  children  called  “Uncle  Dick,”  spent  a 
Sunday  under  the  pine  trees  in  our  front  yard.  We  felt 
on  those  days  a  connection  with  the  great  world  so 
much  more  heroic  than  the  village  world  which  sur-  10 
rounded  us  through  all  the  other  days.  My  father  was 
a  member  of  the  state  senate  for  the  sixteen  years  be¬ 
tween  1854  and  1870,  and  even  as  a  little  child  I  was 
dimly  conscious  of  the  grave  march  of  public  affairs  in 
his  comings  and  goings  at  the  state  capital.  1 5 

He  was  much  too  occupied  to  allow  time  for  rem¬ 
iniscence,  but  I  remember  overhearing  a  conversation 
between  a  visitor  and  himself  concerning  the  stirring 
days  before  the  war,  when  it  was  by  no  means  certain 
that  the  Union  men  in  the  legislature  would  always  20 
have  enough  votes  to  keep  Illinois  from  seceding.  I 
heard  with  breathless  interest  my  father’s  account  of 
the  trip  a  majority  of  the  legislators  had  made  one  dark 
day  to  St.  Louis,  that  there  might  not  be  enough  men 
for  a  quorum,  and  so  no  vote  could  be  taken  on  the  2  5 
momentous  question  until  the  Union  men  could  rally 
their  forces. 

My  father  always  spoke  of  the  martyred  President  as 


28  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


Mr.  Lincoln,  and  I  never  heard  the  great  name  without 
a  thrill.  I  remember  the  day  —  it  must  have  been  one 
of  comparative  leisure,  perhaps  a  Sunday  —  when  at 
my  request  my  father  took  out  of  his  desk  a  thin  packet 
5  marked  “Mr.  Lincoln’s  Letters,”  the  shortest  one  of 
which  bore  unmistakable  traces  of  that  remarkable 
personality.  These  letters  began,  “My  dear  Double- 
D’ed  Addams,”  and  to  the  inquiry  as  to  how  the 
person  thus  addressed  was  about  to  vote  on  a  certain 
i  o  measure  then  before  the  legislature,  was  added  the 
assurance  that  he  knew  that  this  Addams  “would  vote 
according  to  his  conscience,”  but  he  begged  to  know  in 
which  direction  the  same  conscience  “was  pointing.” 
As  my  father  folded  up  the  bits  of  paper  I  fairly  held 
i  s  my  breath  in  my  desire  that  he  should  go  on  with  the 
reminiscence  of  this  wonderful  man,  whom  he  had 
known  in  his  comparative  obscurity,  or  better  still,  that 
he  should  be  moved  to  tell  some  of  the  exciting  in¬ 
cidents  of  the  Lincoln-Douglas  debates.0  There  were  at 
20  least  two  pictures  of  Lincoln  that  always  hung  in  my 
father’s  room,  and  one  in  our  old-fashioned  upstairs 
parlor,  of  Lincoln  with  little  Tad.°  For  one  or  all  of 
these  reasons  I  always  tend  to  associate  Lincoln  with 
the  tenderest  thoughts  of  my  father. 

2s  I  recall  a  time  of  great  perplexity  in  the  summer  of 
1894,  when  Chicago  was  filled  with  federal  troops  sent 
there  by  the  President  of  the  United  States,  and  their 
presence  was  resented  by  the  governor  of  the  state,  that 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 


29 


1  walked  the  wearisome  way  from  Hull-House  to 
Lincoln  Park  —  for  no  cars  were  running  regularly  at 
that  moment  of  sympathetic  strikes0  —  in  order  to  look 
at  and  gain  magnanimous  counsel,  if  I  might,  from  the 
marvelous  St.  Gaudens  statue0  which  had  been  but 
recently  placed  at  the  entrance  of  the  park.  Some  of 
Lincoln’s  immortal  words  were  cut  into  the  stone  at 
his  feet,  and  never  did  a  distracted  town  more  sorely 
need  the  healing  of  “with  charity  towards  all”  than  did 
Chicago  at  that  moment,  and  the  tolerance  of  the  man 
who  had  won  charity  for  those  on  both  sides  of  “an 
irrepressible  conflict.” 

Of  the  many  things  written  of  my  father  in  that  sad 
August  in  1881,  when  he  died,  the  one  I  cared  for  most 
was  written  by  an  old  political  friend  of  his  who  was 
then  editor  of  a  great  Chicago  daily.  He  wrote  that 
while  there  were  doubtless  many  members  of  the  Illinois 
legislature  who  during  the  great  contracts  of  the  war 
time  and  the  demoralizing  reconstruction  days  that 
followed,  had  never  accepted  a  bribe,  he  wished  to  bear 
testimony  that  he  personally  had  known  but  this  one 
man  who  had  never  been  offered  a  bribe  because  bad 
men  were  instinctively  afraid  of  him. 

I  feel  now  the  hot  chagrin  with  which  I  recalled  this 
statement  during  those  early  efforts  of  Illinois  in  which 
Hull-House  joined,  to  secure  the  passage  of  the  first 
factory  legislation.  I  was  told  by  the  representatives  of 
an  informal  association  of  manufacturers  that  if  the 


3o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

residents  of  Hull-House  would  drop  this  nonsense  about 
a  sweat  shop  bill,  of  which  they  knew  nothing,  certain 
business  men  would  agree  to  give  fifty  thousand  dollars 
within  two  years  to  be  used  for  any  of  the  philanthropic 
5  activities  of  the  Settlement.  As  the  fact  broke  upon  me 
that  I  was  being  offered  a  bribe,  the  shame  was  enor¬ 
mously  increased  by  the  memory  of  this  statement. 
What  had  befallen  the  daughter  of  my  father  that  such 
a  thing  could  happen  to  her?  The  salutary  reflection 
othat  it  could  not  have  occurred  unless  a  weakness  in 
myself  had  permitted  it,  withheld  me  at  least  from  an 
heroic  display  of  indignation  before  the  two  men  making 
the  offer,  and  I  explained  as  gently  as  I  could  that  we 
had  no  ambition  to  make  Hull-House  “the  largest 
s  institution  on  the  West  Side/’  but  that  we  were  much 
concerned  that  our  neighbors  should  be  protected  from 
untoward  conditions  of  work,  and  —  so  much  heroics, 
youth  must  permit  itself — if  to  accomplish  this  the 
destruction  of  Hull-House  was  necessary,  that  we  would 
o  cheerfully  sing  a  Te  Deum  on  its  ruins.  The  good 
friend  who  had  invited  me  to  lunch  at  the  Union  League 
Club  to  meet  two  of  his  friends  who  wanted  to  talk 
over  the  sweat  shop  bill  here  kindly  intervened,  and  we 
all  hastened  to  cover  over  the  awkward  situation  by 
s that  scurrying  away  from  ugly  morality  which  seems 
to  be  an  obligation  of  social  intercourse. 

Of  the  many  old  friends  of  my  father  who  kindly 
came  to  look  up  his  daughter  in  the  first  days  of  Hull- 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 


3i 


House,  I  recall  none  with  more  pleasure  than  Lyman 
Trumbull,0  whom  we  used  to  point  out  to  the  members 
of  the  Young  Citizens’  Club  as  the  man  who  had  for 
days  held  in  his  keeping  the  Proclamation  of  Emancipa¬ 
tion  until  his  friend  President  Lincoln  was  ready  to 
issue  it.  I  remember  the  talk  he  gave  at  Hull-House  on 
one  of  our  early  celebrations  of  Lincoln’s  birthday,  his 
assertion  that  Lincoln  was  no  cheap  popular  hero,  that 
the  “common  people”  would  have  to  make  an  effort  if 
they  would  understand  his  greatness,  as  Lincoln 
painstakingly  made  a  long  effort  to  understand  the 
greatness  of  the  people.  There  was  something  in  the 
admiration  of  Lincoln’s  contemporaries,  or  at  least  of 
those  men  who  had  known  him  personally,  which  was 
quite  unlike  even  the  best  of  the  devotion  and  reverent 
understanding  which  has  developed  since.  In  the  first 
place,  they  had  so  large  a  fund  of  common  experience; 
they  too  had  pioneered  in  a  western  country,  and  had 
urged  the  development  of  canals  and  railroads  in  order 
that  tho  raw  prairie  crops  might  be  transported  to 
market;  they  too  had  realized  that  if  this  last  tremen¬ 
dous  experiment  in  self-government  failed  here,  it  would 
be  the  disappointment  of  the  centuries  and  that  upon 
their  ability  to  organize  self-government  in  state, 
county,  and  town  depended  the  verdict  of  history.  These 
men  also  knew,  as  Lincoln  himself  did,  that  if  this 
tremendous  experiment  was  to  come  to  fruition,  it  must 
be  brought  about  by  the  people  themselves;  that  there 


32  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

was  no  other  capital  fund  upon  which  to  draw.  I  re¬ 
member  an  incident  occurring  when  I  was  about  fifteen 
years  old,  in  which  the  conviction  was  driven  into  my 
mind  that  the  people  themselves  were  the  great  resource 
5  of  the  country.  My  father  had  made  a  little  address  of 
reminiscence  at  a  meeting  of  “the  old  settlers  of 
Stephenson  County,”  which  was  held  every  summer 
in  the  grove  beside  the  mill,  relating  his  experiences  in 
inducing  the  farmers  of  the  county  to  subscribe  for 
o  stock  in  the  Northwestern  Railroad,  which  was  the  first 
to  penetrate  the  county  and  to  make  a  connection  with 
the  Great  Lakes  at  Chicago.  Many  of  the  Pennsylvania 
German  farmers  doubted  the  value  of  “the  whole  new¬ 
fangled  business,”  and  had  no  use  for  any  railroad, 
s  much  less  for  one  in  which  they  were  asked  to  risk  their 
hard-earned  savings.  My  father  told  of  his  despair  in 
one  farmers’  community  dominated  by  such  prejudice 
which  did  not  in  the  least  give  way  under  his  argument, 
but  finally  melted  under  the  enthusiasm  of  a  high- 
o  spirited  German  matron  who  took  a  share  to  be  paid  for 
“out  of  butter  and  egg  money.”  As  he  related  his  ad¬ 
miration  of  her,  an  old  woman’s  piping  voice  in  the 
audience  called  out:  “I’m  here  to-day,  Mr.  Addams, 
and  I’d  do  it  again  if  you  asked  me.”  The  old  woman, 
5  bent  and  broken  by  her  seventy  years  of  toilsome  life, 
was  brought  to  the  platform  and  I  was  much  impressed 
by  my  father’s  grave  presentation  of  her  as  “one  of  the 
public-spirited  pioneers  to  whose  heroic  fortitude  we  are 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 


33 


indebted  for  the  development  of  this  country.”  I  re¬ 
member  that  I  was  at  that  time  reading  with  great 
enthusiasm  Carlyle’s  “Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,”  but 
on  the  evening  of  “Old  Settlers’  Day,”  to  my  surprise, 
I  found  it  difficult  to  go  on.  Its  sonorous  sentences  and 
exaltation  of  the  man  who  “can”  suddenly  ceased  to  be 
convincing.  I  had  already  written  down  in  my  common¬ 
place  book  a  resolution  to  give  at  least  twenty-five 
copies  of  this  book  each  year  to  noble  young  people  of 
my  acquaintance.  It  is  perhaps  fitting  to  record  in  this 
chapter  that  the  very  first  Christmas  we  spent  at  Hull- 
House,  in  spite  of  exigent  demands  upon  my  slender 
purse  for  candy  and  shoes,  I  gave  to  a  club  of  boys 
twenty-five  copies  of  the  then  new  Carl  Schurz’s 
“Appreciation  of  Abraham  Lincoln.” 

In  our  early  effort  at  LIull-House  to  hand  on  to  our 
neighbors  whatever  of  help  we  had  found  for  ourselves, 
we  made  much  of  Lincoln.  We  were  often  distressed  by 
the  children  of  immigrant  parents  who  were  ashamed  of 
the  pit  whence  they  were  digged,  who  repudiated  the 
language  and  customs  of  their  elders,  and  counted  them¬ 
selves  successful  as  they  were  able  to  ignore  the  past. 
Whenever  I  held  up  Lincoln  for  their  admiration  as  the 
greatest  American,  I  invariably  pointed  out  his  marvel¬ 
ous  power  to  retain  and  utilize  past  experiences;  that  he 
never  forgot  how  the  plain  people  in  Sangamon  County 
thought  and  felt  when. he  himself  had  moved  to  town; 
that  this  habit  was  the  foundation  for  his  marvelous 


34  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

capacity  for  growth;  that  during  those  distracting  years 
in  Washington  it  enabled  him  to  make  clear  beyond 
denial  to  the  American  people  themselves,  the  goal 
towards  which  they  were  moving.  I  was  sometimes 
s  bold  enough  to  add  that  proficiency  in  the  art  of  recog¬ 
nition  and  comprehension  did  not  come  without  effort, 
and  that  certainly  its  attainment  was  necessary  for  any 
successful  career  in  our  conglomerate  America. 

An  instance  of  the  invigorating  and  clarifying  power 
oof  Lincoln’s  influence  came  to  me  many  years  ago  in 
England.  I  had  spent  two  days  in  Oxford  under  the 
guidance  of  Arnold  Toynbee’s0  old  friend  Sidney  Ball  of 
St.  John’s  College,  who  was  closely  associated  with  that 
group  of  scholars  we  all  identify  with  the  beginnings  of 
5  the  Settlement  movement.  It  was  easy  to  claim  the 
philosophy  of  Thomas  Hill  Green,  the  road-building 
episode  of  Ruskin,  the  experimental  living  in  the  East 
End  by  Frederick  Maurice,  the  London  Workingmen’s 
College  of  Edward  Dennison,  as  foundations  laid  by 
o  university  men  for  the  establishment  of  Toynbee  Hall. 
I  was  naturally  much  interested  in  the  beginnings  of  a 
movement  whose  slogan  was  “Back  to  the  People,” 
and  which  could  doubtless  claim  the  Settlement  as  one 
of  its  manifestations.  Nevertheless  the  processes  by 
s  which  so  simple  a  conclusion  as  residence  among  the 
poor  in  East  London  was  reached,  seemed  to  me  very 
involved  and  roundabout.  However  inevitable  these 
processes  might  be  for  class-conscious  Englishmen,  they 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 


35 

could  not  but  seem  artificial  to  a  western  American  who 
had  been  born  in  a  rural  community  where  the  early 
pioneer  life  had  made  social  distinctions  impossible. 
Always  on  the  alert  lest  American  Settlements  should 
become  mere  echoes  and  imitations  of  the  English 
movement,  I  found  myself  assenting  to  what  was  shown 
me  only  with  that  part  of  my  consciousness  which  had 
been  formed  by  reading  of  English  social  movements, 
while  at  the  same  time  the  rustic  American  inside  looked 
on  in  detached  comment. 

Why  should  an  American  be  lost  in  admiration  of  a 
group  of  Oxford  students  because  they  went  out  to  mend 
a  disused  road,  inspired  thereto  by  Ruskin’s  teaching 
for  the  bettering  of  the  common  life,  when  all  the 
country  roads  in  America  were  mended  each  spring  by 
self-respecting  citizens,  who  were  thus  carrying  out  the 
simple  method  devised  by  a  democratic  government  for 
providing  highways?  No  humor  penetrated  my  high 
mood  even  as  I  somewhat  uneasily  recalled  certain 
spring  thaws  when  I  had  been  mired  in  roads  provided 
by  the  American  citizen.  I  continued  to  fumble  for  a 
synthesis  which  I  was  unable  to  make  until  I  developed 
that  uncomfortable  sense  of  playing  two  roles  at  once. 
It  was  therefore  almost  with  a  dual  consciousness  that  I 
was  ushered,  during  the  last  afternoon  of  my  Oxford 
stay,  into  the  drawing-room  of  the  Master  of  Baliol. 
Edward  Caird’s  “Evolution  of  Religion,”0  which  I  had 
read  but  a  year  or  two  before,  had  been  of  unspeakable 


36  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

comfort  to  me  in  the  labyrinth  of  differing  ethical  teach¬ 
ings  and  religious  creeds  which  the  many  immigrant 
colonies  of  our  neighborhood  presented.  I  remember 
that  I  wanted  very  much  to  ask  the  author  himself, 
5  how  far  it  was  reasonable  to  expect  the  same  quality  of 
virtue  and  a  similar  standard  of  conduct  from  these 
divers  people.  I  was  timidly  trying  to  apply  his  method 
of  study  to  those  groups  of  homesick  immigrants 
huddled  together  in  strange  tenement  houses,  among 
o  whom  I  seemed  to  detect  the  beginnings  of  a  secular 
religion  or  at  least  of  a  wide  humanitarianism  evolved 
out  of  the  various  exigencies  of  the  situation;  somewhat 
as  a  household  of  children,  whose  mother  is  dead,  out 
of  their  sudden  necessity  perform  unaccustomed  offices 
5  for  each  other  and  awkwardly  exchange  consolations, 
as  children  in  happier  households  never  dream  of  doing. 
Perhaps  Mr.  Caird  could  tell  me  whether  there  was  any 
religious  content  in  this 

Faith  to  each  other ;  this  fidelity 
o  Of  fellow  wanderers  in  a  desert  place. 

But  when  tea  was  over  and  my  opportunity  came  for 
a  talk  with  my  host,  I  suddenly  remembered,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  other  associations,  only  Mr.  Caird’s  fine 
analysis  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  delivered  in  a  lecture  two 
5  years  before. 

The  memory  of  Lincoln,  the  mention  of  his  name, 
came  like  a  refreshing  breeze  from  off  the  prairie,  blow- 


INFLUENCE  OF  LINCOLN 


37 


ing  aside  all  the  scholarly  implications  in  which  I  had 
become  so  reluctantly  involved,  and  as  the  philosopher 
spoke  of  the  great  American  “who  was  content  merely 
to  dig  the  channels  through  which  the  moral  life  of  his 
countrymen  might  flow,”  I  was  gradually  able  to  make 
a  natural  connection  between  this  intellectual  penetra¬ 
tion  at  Oxford  and  the  moral  perception  which  is  always 
necessary  for  the  discovery  of  new  methods  by  which 
to  minister  to  human  needs.  In  the  unceasing  ebb  and 
flow  of  justice  and  oppression  we  must  all  dig  channels 
as  best  we  may,  that  at  the  propitious  moment  some¬ 
what  of  the  swelling  tide  may  be  conducted  to  the 
barren  places  of  life. 

Gradually  a  healing  sense  of  well-being  enveloped  me 
and  a  quick  remorse  for  my  blindness,  as  I  realized  that 
no  one  among  his  own  countrymen  had  been  able  to 
interpret  Lincoln’s  greatness  more  nobly  than  this  Ox¬ 
ford  scholar  had  done,  and  that  vision  and  wisdom  as 
well  as  high  motives  must  lie  behind  every  effective 
stroke  in  the  continuous  labor  for  human  equality;  I  re¬ 
membered  that  another  Master  of  Baliol,  Jowett0  him¬ 
self,  had  said  that  it  was  fortunate  for  society  that  every 
age  possessed  at  least  a  few  minds  which,  like  Arnold 
Toynbee’s,  were  “perpetually  disturbed  over  the  ap¬ 
parent  inequalities  of  mankind.”  Certainly  both  the 
English  and  American  settlements  could  unite  in  con¬ 
fessing  to  that  disturbance  of  mind. 

Traces  of  this  Oxford  visit  are  curiously  reflected  in 


38  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

a  paper  I  wrote  soon  after  my  return  at  the  request  of 
the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science. 
It  begins  as  follows: — 

The  word  “settlement,”  which  we  have  borrowed  from  London, 
5  is  apt  to  grate  a  little  upon  American  ears.  It  is  not,  after  all,  so  long 
ago  that  Americans  who  settled  were  those  who  had  adventured  into 
a  new  country,  where  they  were  pioneers  in  the  midst  of  difficult 
surroundings.  The  word  still  implies  migrating  from  one  condition 
of  life  to  another  totally  unlike  it,  and  against  this  implication  the 
coresident  of  an  American  settlement  takes  alarm. 

We  do  not  like  to  acknowledge  that  Americans  are  divided  into  two 
nations,  as  her  prime  minister  once  admitted  of  England.  We  are  not 
willing,  openly  and  professedly,  to  assume  that  American  citizens  are 
broken  up  into  classes,  even  if  we  make  that  assumption  the  preface 
i  5  to  a  plea  that  the  superior  class  has  duties  to  the  inferior.  Our 
democracy  is  still  our  most  precious  possession,  and  we  do  well  to 
resent  any  inroads  upon  it,  even  though  they  may  be  made  in  the 
name  of  philanthropy. 

Is  it  not  Abraham  Lincoln  who  has  cleared  the  title 
20 to  our  democracy?  He  made  plain,  once  for  all,  that 
democratic  government,  associated  as  it  is  with  all  the 
mistakes  and  shortcomings  of  the  common  people,  still 
remains  the  most  valuable  contribution  America  has 
made  to  the  moral  life  of  the  world. 


N 


CHAPTER  III 
Boarding-school  Ideals 

As  my  three  older  sisters  had  already  attended  the 
seminary  at  Rockford,  of  which  my  father  was  trustee, 
without  any  question  I  entered  there  at  seventeen,  with 
such  meager  preparation  in  Latin  and  algebra  as  the 
village  school  had  afforded.  I  was  very  ambitious  to  go  5 
to  Smith  College,0  although  I  well  knew  that  my  father’s 
theory  in  regard  to  the  education  of  his  daughters  im¬ 
plied  a  school  as  near  at  home  as  possible,  to  be  followed 
by  travel  abroad  in  lieu  of  the  wider  advantages  which 
an  eastern  college  is  supposed  to  afford.  I  was  much  10 
impressed  by  the  recent  return  of  my  sister  from  a  year 
in  Europe,  yet  I  was  greatly  disappointed  at  the 
moment  of  starting  to  humdrum  Rockford.  After  the 
first  weeks  of  homesickness  were  over,  however,  I  be¬ 
came  very  much  absorbed  in  the  little  world  which  the  1 5 
boarding  school  in  any  form  always  offers  to  its  students. 

The  school  at  Rockford  in  1877  had  not  changed  its 
name  from  seminary  to  college,  although  it  numbered, 
on  its  faculty  and  among  its  alumnae,  college  women 
who  were  most  eager  that  this  should  be  done,  and  who  20 
really  accomplished  it  during  the  next  five  years.  The  J 
school  was  one  of  the  earliest  efforts  for  women’s  higher 


39 


4o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

education  in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  and  from  the  be¬ 
ginning  was  called  “  The  Mount  Holyoke0  of  the  West.  ” 
It  reflected  much  of  the  missionary  spirit  of  that  pioneer 
institution,  and  the  proportion  of  missionaries  among 
s  its  early  graduates  was  almost  as  large  as  Mount  Hol¬ 
yoke’s  own.  In  addition  there  had  been  thrown  about 
the  founders  of  the  early  western  school  the  glamour  of 
frontier  privations,  and  the  first  students,  conscious  of 
the  heroic  self-sacrifice  made  in  their  behalf,  felt  that 
oeach  minute  of  the  time  thus  dearly  bought  must  be 
conscientiously  used.  This  inevitably  fostered  an  at¬ 
mosphere  of  intensity,  a  fever  of  preparation  which  con¬ 
tinued  long  after  the  direct  making  of  it  had  ceased,  and 
which  the  later  girls  accepted,  as  they  did  the  campus 
s  and  the  buildings,  without  knowing  that  it  could  have 
been  otherwise. 

There  was,  moreover,  always  present  in  the  school  a 
larger  or  smaller  group  of  girls  who  consciously  accepted 
this  heritage  and  persistently  endeavored  to  fulfill  its 
o  obligation.  We  worked  in  those  early  years  as  if  we 
really  believed  the  portentous  statement  from  Aristotle0 
which  we  found  quoted  in  Boswell’s  Johnson0  and  with 
which  we  illuminated  the  wall  of  the  room  occupied  by 
our  Chess  Club;  it  remained  there  for  months,  solely  out 
s  of  reverence,  let  us  hope,  for  the  two  ponderous  names 
associated  with  it;  at  least  I  have  enough  confidence  in 
human  nature  to  assert  that  we  never  really  believed 
that  “There  is  the  same  difference  between  the  learned 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


4i 


and  the  unlearned  as  there  is  between  the  living  and  the 
dead.”  We  were  also  too  fond  of  quoting  Carlyle  to  the 
effect,  “  ’Tis  not  to  taste  sweet  things,  but  to  do  noble 
and  true  things  that  the  poorest  son  of  Adam  dimly 
longs.” 

As  I  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  spirit  of  my  con¬ 
temporary  group  by  looking  over  many  documents,  I 
find  nothing  more  amusing  than  a  plaint  registered 
against  life’s  indistinctness,  which  I  imagine  more  or 
less  reflected  the  sentiments  of  all  of  us.  At  any  rate 
here  it  is  for  the  entertainment  of  the  reader  if  not  for 
his  edification:  “So  much  of  our  time  is  spent  in 
preparation,  so  much  in  routine,  and  so  much  in  sleep, 
we  find  it  difficult  to  have  any  experience  at  all.”  We 
did  not,  however,  tamely  accept  such  a  state  of  affairs, 
for  we  made  various  and  restless  attempts  to  break 
through  this  dull  obtuseness. 

At  one  time  five  of  us  tried  to  understand  De  Quin- 
cey’s  marvelous  “Dreams”  more  sympathetically,  by 
drugging  ourselves  with  opium.  We  solemnly  con¬ 
sumed  small  white  powders  at  intervals  during  an  entire 
long  holiday,  but  no  mental  reorientation  took  place, 
and  the  suspense  and  excitement  did  not  even  permit  us 
to  grow  sleepy.  About  four  o’clock  on  the  weird  after¬ 
noon,  the  young  teacher  whom  we  had  been  obliged  to 
take  into  our  confidence  grew  alarmed  over  the  whole 
performance,  took  away  our  De  Quincey  and  all  the  re¬ 
maining  powders,  administered  an  emetic  to  each  of  the 


42  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

five  aspirants  for  sympathetic  understanding  of  all 
human  experience,  and  sent  us  to  our  separate  rooms 
with  a  stern  command  to  appear  at  family  worship  after 
supper  “whether  we  were  able  to  or  not.” 
s  Whenever  we  had  chances  to  write,  we  took,  of  course, 
large  themes,  usually  from  the  Greek  because  they  were 
the  most  stirring  to  the  imagination.  The  Greek  oration 
I  gave  at  our  Junior  Exhibition  was  written  with  infinite 
pains  and  taken  to  the  Greek  professor  in  Beloit  College0 
othat  there  might  be  no  mistakes,  even  after  the  Rock¬ 
ford  College  teacher  and  the  most  scholarly  clergyman 
in  town  had  both  passed  upon  it.  The  oration  upon 
Bellerophon0  and  his  successful  fight  with  the  Minotaur, 
contended  that  social  evils  could  only  be  overcome  by 
shim  who  soared  above  them  into  idealism,  as  Belle¬ 
rophon,  mounted  upon  the  winged  horse  Pegasus,0  had 
slain  the  earthy  dragon. 

There  were  practically  no  economics  taught  in 
women’s  colleges  —  at  least  in  the  fresh-water  ones  — 
o  thirty  years  ago,  although  we  painstakingly  studied 
“mental”  and  “moral”  philosophy,  which,  though  far 
from  dry  in  the  classroom,  became  the  subject  of  more 
spirited  discussion  outside,  and  gave  us  a  clew  for 
animated  rummaging  in  the  little  college  library.  Of 
s  course  we  read  a  great  deal  of  Ruskin  and  Browning, 
and  liked  the  most  abstruse  parts  the  best;  but  like  the 
famous  gentleman  who  talked  prose  without  knowing 
it,  we  never  dreamed  of  connecting  them  with  our 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


43 


philosophy.  My  genuine  interest  was  history,  partly 
because  of  a  superior  teacher,  and  partly  because  my 
father  had  always  insisted  upon  a  certain  amount  of 
historic  reading  ever  since  he  had  paid  me,  as  a  little 
girl,  five  cents  a  “Life”  for  each  Plutarch  hero0  I  could 
intelligently  report  to  him,  and  twenty-five  cents  for 
every  volume  of  Irving’s  “Life  of  Washington.” 

When  we  started  for  the  long  vacations,  a  little  group 
of  five  would  vow  that  during  the  summer  we  would 
read  all  of  Motley’s  “Dutch  Republic”  or,  more  am¬ 
bitious  still,  all  of  Gibbon’s  “Decline  and  Fall  of  the 
Roman  Empire.”  When  we  returned  at  the  opening  of 
school  and  three  of  us  announced  we  had  finished  the 
latter,  each  became  skeptical  of  the  other  two.  We  fell 
upon  each  other  with  a  sort  of  rough-and-tumble  exam¬ 
ination,  in  which  no  quarter  was  given  or  received;  but 
the  suspicion  was  finally  removed  that  any  one  had 
skipped.  We  took  for  a  class  motto  the  early  Saxon 
word  for  lady,°  translated  into  breadgiver,  and  we  took 
for  our  class  color  the  poppy,  because  poppies  grew 
among  the  wheat,  as  if  Nature  knew  that  wherever 
there  was  hunger  that  needed  food  there  would  be  pain 
that  needed  relief.  We  must  have  found  the  sentiment 
in  a  book  somewhere,  but  we  used  it  so  much  that  it 
finally  seemed  like  an  idea  of  our  own,  although  of 
course  none  of  us  had  ever  seen  a  European  field,  the 
only  page  upon  which  Nature  has  written  this  particular 
message. 


44  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

That  this  group  of  ardent  girls  who  discussed  every¬ 
thing  under  the  sun  with  such  unabated  interest,  did 
not  take  it  all  out  in  talk,  may  be  demonstrated  by  the 
fact  that  one  of  the  class  who  married  a  missionary 
5  founded  a  very  successful  school  in  Japan  for  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  the  English  and  Americans  living  there;  another 
of  the  class  became  a  medical  missionary  to  Korea,  and 
because  of  her  successful  treatment  of  the  Queen,  was 
made  court  physician  at  a  time  when  the  opening  was 
o  considered  of  importance  in  the  diplomatic  as  well  as 
in  the  missionary  world;  still  another  became  an  un¬ 
usually  skilled  teacher  of  the  blind;  and  one  of  them  a 
pioneer  librarian  in  that  early  effort  to  bring  “books  to 
the  people.” 

s  Perhaps  this  early  companionship  showed  me  how 
essentially  similar  are  the  various  forms  of  social  effort, 
and  curiously  enough,  the  actual  activities  of  a  mission¬ 
ary  school  are  not  unlike  many  that  are  carried  on  in  a 
Settlement  situated  in  a  foreign  quarter.  Certainly  the 
omost  sympathetic  and  comprehending  visitors  we  have 
ever  had  at  Hull-House  have  been  returned  mission¬ 
aries;  among  them  two  elderly  ladies,  who  had  lived  for 
years  in  India  and  who  had  been  homesick  and  be¬ 
wildered  since  their  return,  declared  that  the  fortnight 
5  at  Hull-House  had  been  the  happiest  and  most  familiar 
they  had  had  in  America. 

Of  course  in  such  an  atmosphere  a  girl  like  myself,  of 
serious  not  to  say  priggish  tendency,  did  not  escape  a 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


45 


concerted  pressure  to  push  her  into  the  “missionary 
field.”  During  the  four  years  it  was  inevitable  that 
every  sort  of  evangelical  appeal  should  have  been  made 
to  reach  the  comparatively  few  “unconverted”  girls  in 
the  school.  We  were  the  subject  of  prayer  at  the  daily 
chapel  exercise  and  the  weekly  prayer  meeting,  attend¬ 
ance  upon  which  was  obligatory. 

I  was  singularly  unresponsive  to  all  these  forms  of 
emotional  appeal,  although  I  became  unspeakably  em¬ 
barrassed  when  they  were  presented  to  me  at  close 
range  by  a  teacher  during  the  “silent  hour,”  which  we 
were  all  required  to  observe  every  evening  and  which 
was  never  broken  into,  even  by  a  member  of  the  faculty, 
unless  the  errand  was  one  of  grave  import.  I  found 
these  occasional  interviews  on  the  part  of  one  of  the 
more  serious  young  teachers,  of  whom  I  was  extremely 
fond,  hard  to  endure,  as  was  a  long  series  of  conversa¬ 
tions  in  my  senior  year  conducted  by  one  of  the  most 
enthusiastic  members  of  the  faculty,  in  which  the  de¬ 
sirability  of  Turkey  as  a  field  for  missionary  labor  was 
enticingly  put  before  me.  I  suppose  I  held  myself  aloof 
from  all  these  influences,  partly  owing  to  the  fact  that 
my  father  was  not  a  communicant  of  any  church,  and  I 
tremendously  admired  his  scrupulous  morality  and 
sense  of  honor  in  all  matters  of  personal  and  public  con¬ 
duct,  and  also  because  the  little  group  to  which  I  have 
referred  was  much  given  to  a  sort  of  rationalism,  doubt¬ 
less  founded  upon  an  early  reading  of  Emerson.  In  this 


46  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

connection,  when  Bronson  Alcott  came  to  lecture  at  the 
school,  we  all  vied  with  each  other  for  a  chance  to  do 
him  a  personal  service  because  he  had  been  a  friend  of 
Emerson,  and  we  were  inexpressibly  scornful  of  our 
s  younger  fellow-students  who  cared  for  him  merely  on 
the  basis  of  his  grandfatherly  relation0  to  “ Little 
Women.”  I  recall  cleaning  the  clay  of  the  unpaved 
streets  off  his  heavy  cloth  overshoes  in  a  state  of  ecstatic 
energy. 

o  But  I  think  in  my  case  there  were  other  factors  as 
well  that  contributed  to  my  unresponsiveness  to  the 
evangelical  appeal.  A  curious  course  of  reading  I  had 
marked  out  for  myself  in  medieval  history,  seems  to 
have  left  me  fascinated  by  an  ideal  of  mingled  learning, 
5  piety,  and  physical  labor,  more  nearly  exemplified  by 
the  Port  Royalists0  than  by  any  others. 

The  only  moments  in  which  I  seem  to  have  ap¬ 
proximated  in  my  own  experience  to  a  faint  realization 
of  the  “beauty  of  holiness,”  as  I  conceived  it,  was  each 
o  Sunday  morning  between  the  hours  of  nine  and  ten, 
when  I  went  into  the  exquisitely  neat  room  of  the 
teacher  of  Greek  and  read  with  her  from  a  Greek  testa¬ 
ment.  We  did  this  every  Sunday  morning  for  two 
years.  It  was  not  exactly  a  lesson,  for  I  never  prepared 
s  for  it,  and  while  I  was  held  within  reasonable  bounds  of 
syntax,  I  was  allowed  much  more  freedom  in  translation 
than  was  permitted  the  next  morning  when  I  read 
Homer0;  neither  did  we  discuss  doctrines,  for  although 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


47 


it  was  with  this  same  teacher  that  in  our  junior  year  we 
studied  Paul’s  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  committing  all 
of  it  to  memory  and  analyzing  and  reducing  it  to 
doctrines  within  an  inch  of  our  lives,  we  never  allowed 
an  echo  of  this  exercise  to  appear  at  these  blessed 
Sunday  morning  readings.  It  was  as  if  the  disputatious 
Paul  had  not  yet  been,  for  we  always  read  from  the 
Gospels.  The  regime  of  Rockford  Seminary  was  still 
very  simple  in  the  70’s.  Each  student  made  her  own 
fire  and  kept  her  own  room  in  order.  Sunday  morning 
was  a  great  clearing  up  day,  and  the  sense  of  having 
made  immaculate  my  own  immediate  surroundings,  the 
consciousness  of  clean  linen,  said  to  be  close  to  the  con¬ 
sciousness  of  a  clean  conscience,  always  mingles  in  my 
mind  with  these  early  readings.  I  certainly  bore  away 
with  me  a  lifelong  enthusiasm  for  reading  the  Gospels 
in  bulk,  a  whole  one  at  a  time,  and  an  insurmountable 
distaste  for  having  them  cut  up  into  chapter  and  verse, 
or  for  hearing  the  incidents  in  that  wonderful  Life  thus 
referred  to  as  if  it  were  merely  a  record. 

My  copy  of  the  Greek  testament  had  been  presented 
to  me  by  the  brother  of  our  Greek  teacher,  Professor 
Blaisdell  of  Beloit  College,  a  true  scholar  in  “Christian 
Ethics,”  as  his  department  was  called.  I  recall  that 
one  day  in  the  summer  after  I  left  college  —  one  of  the 
black  days  which  followed  the  death  of  my  father  — 
this  kindly  scholar  came  to  see  me  in  order  to  bring 
such  comfort  as  he  might  and  to  inquire  how  far  I  had 


48  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

found  solace  in  the  little  book  he  had  given  me  so  long 
before.  When  I  suddenly  recall  the  village  in  which  I 
was  born,  its  steeples  and  roofs  look  as  they  did  that 
day  from  the  hilltop  where  we  talked  together,  the 
s  familiar  details  smoothed  out  and  merging,  as  it  were, 
into  that  wide  conception  of  the  universe,  which  for  the 
moment  swallowed  up  my  personal  grief  or  at  least 
assuaged  it  with  a  realization  that  it  was  but  a  drop  in 
that  “torrent  of  sorrow  and  anguish  and  terror  which 
o flows  under  all  the  footsteps  of  man.”  This  realization 
of  sorrow  as  the  common  lot,  of  death  as  the  universal 
experience,  was  the  first  comfort  which  my  bruised 
spirit  had  received.  In  reply  to  my  impatience  with 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  “resignation,”  that  it  implied 
s  that  you  thought  of  your  sorrow  only  in  its  effect  upon 
you  and  were  disloyal  to  the  affection  itself,  I  remember 
how  quietly  the  Christian  scholar  changed  his  phrase¬ 
ology,  saying  that  sometimes  consolation  came  to  us 
better  in  the  words  of  Plato,0  and,  as  nearly  as  I  can 
o  remember,  that  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever  heard 
Plato’s  sonorous  argument  for  the  permanence  of  the 
excellent. 

When  Professor  Blaisdell  returned  to  his  college,  he 
left  in  my  hands  a  small  copy  of  “The  Crito.”  The 
5  Greek  was  too  hard  for  me,  and  I  was  speedily  driven  to 
Jowett’s0  translation.  That  old-fashioned  habit  of 
presenting  favorite  books  to  eager  young  people,  al¬ 
though  it  degenerated  into  the  absurdity  of  “friend- 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


49 


ship’s  offerings,”  had  much  to  be  said  for  it,  when  it 
indicated  the  wellsprings  of  literature  from  which  the 
donor  himself  had  drawn  waters  of  healing  and  inspira¬ 
tion. 

Throughout  our  school  years  we  were  always  keenly  s 
conscious  of  the  growing  development  of  Rockford 
Seminary  into  a  college.  The  opportunity  for  our  Alma 
Mater  to  take  her  place  in  the  new  movement  of  full 
college  education  for  women  filled  us  with  enthusiasm, 
and  it  became  a  driving  ambition  with  the  under-  io 
graduates  to  share  in  this  new  and  glorious  undertaking. 
We  gravely  decided  that  it  was  important  that  some 
of  the  students  should  be  ready  to  receive  the  bachelor’s 
degree  the  very  first  moment  that  the  charter  of  the 
school  should  secure  the  right  to  confer  it.  Two  of  us,  1 5 
therefore,  took  a  course  in  mathematics,  advanced  be¬ 
yond  anything  previously  given  in  the  school,  from  one 
of  those  early  young  women  working  for  a  Ph.D.,  who 
was  temporarily  teaching  in  Rockford  that  she  might 
study  more  mathematics  in  Leipsic.0  20 

My  companion  in  all  these  arduous  labors  has  since 
accomplished  more  than  any  of  us  in  the  effort  to 
procure  the  franchise  for  women,  for  even  then  we  all 
took  for  granted  the  righteousness  of  that  cause  into 
which  I  at  least  had  merely  followed  my  father’s  con-  25 
viction.  In  the  old-fashioned  spirit  of  that  cause  I  might 
cite  the  career  of  this  companion  as  an  illustration  of 
the  efficacy  of  higher  mathematics  for  women,  for  she 


50  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

possesses  singular  ability  to  convince  even  the  densest 
legislators  of  their  legal  right  to  define  their  own 
electorate,  even  when  they  quote  against  her  the  dustiest 
of  state  constitutions  or  city  charters, 
s  In  line  with  this  policy  of  placing  a  woman’s  college 
on  an  equality  with  the  other  colleges  of  the  state,  we 
applied  for  an  opportunity  to  compete  in  the  inter¬ 
collegiate  oratorical  contest  of  Illinois,  and  we  succeeded 
in  having  Rockford  admitted  as  the  first  woman’s 
o  college.  When  I  was  finally  selected  as  the  orator,  I  was 
somewhat  dismayed  to  find  that,  representing  not  only 
one  school  but  college  women  in  general,  I  could  not 
resent  the  brutal  frankness  with  which  my  oratorical 
possibilities  were  discussed  by  the  enthusiastic  group 
5  who  would  allow  no  personal  feeling  to  stand  in  the 
way  of  progress,  especially  the  progress  of  Woman’s 
Cause.  I  was  told  among  other  things  that  I  had  an 
intolerable  habit  of  dropping  my  voice  at  the  end  of  a 
sentence  in  the  most  feminine,  apologetic,  and  even 
o  deprecatory  manner  which  would  probably  lose  Woman 
the  first  place. 

Woman  certainly  did  lose  the  first  place  and  stood 
fifth,  exactly  in  the  dreary  middle,  but  the  ignominious 
position  may  not  have  been  solely  due  to  bad  manner- 
5  isms,  for  a  prior  place  was  easily  accorded  to  William 
Jennings  Bryan,0  who  not  only  thrilled  his  auditors 
with  an  almost  prophetic  anticipation  of  the  cross  of 
gold,  but  with  a  moral  earnestness  which  we  had  mis- 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


5i 

takenly  assumed  would  be  the  unique  possession  of  the 
feminine  orator. 

I  so  heartily  concurred  with  the  decision  of  the  judges 
of  the  contest  that  it  was  with  a  care-free  mind  that  I 
induced  my  colleague  and  alternate  to  remain  long 
enough  in  “The  Athens  of  Illinois,”0  in  which  the 
successful  college  was  situated,  to  visit  the  state  institu¬ 
tions,  one  for  the  Blind  and  one  for  the  Deaf  and  Dumb. 
Doctor  Gillette  was  at  that  time  head  of  the  latter 
institution;  his  scholarly  explanation  of  the  method  of 
teaching,  his  concern  for  his  charges,  this  sudden  demon¬ 
stration  of  the  care  the  state  bestowed  upon  its  most 
unfortunate  children,  filled  me  with  grave  speculations 
in  which  the  first,  the  fifth,  or  the  ninth  place  in  an 
oratorical  contest  seemed  of  little  moment. 

However,  this  brief  delay  between  our  field  of  Water¬ 
loo0  and  our  arrival  at  our  aspiring  college  turned  out 
to  be  most  unfortunate,  for  we  found  the  ardent  group 
not  only  exhausted  by  the  premature  preparations  for 
the  return  of  a  successful  orator,  but  naturally  much 
irritated  as  they  contemplated  their  garlands  drooping 
disconsolately  in  tubs  and  bowls  of  water.  They  did 
not  fail  to  make  me  realize  that  I  had  dealt  the  cause  of 
woman’s  advancement  a  staggering  blow,  and  all  my 
explanations  of  the  fifth  place  were  haughtily  considered 
insufficient  before  that  golden  Bar  of  Youth,  so  ab¬ 
surdly  inflexible! 

To  return  to  my  last  year  at  school,  it  was  inevitable 


52  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  the  pressure  toward  religious  profession  should  in¬ 
crease  as  graduating  day  approached.  So  curious,  how¬ 
ever,  are  the  paths  of  moral  development  that  several 
times  during  subsequent  experiences  have  I  felt  that 
5  this  passive  resistance  of  mine,  this  clinging  to  an  in¬ 
dividual  conviction,  was  the  best  moral  training  I  re¬ 
ceived  at  Rockford  College.  During  the  first  decade  of 
Hull-House,  it  was  felt  by  propagandists  of  divers 
social  theories  that  the  new  Settlement  would  be  a  fine 
o  coign  of  vantage  from  which  to  propagate  social  faiths, 
and  that  a  mere  preliminary  step  would  be  the  con¬ 
version  of  the  founders;  hence  I  have  been  reasoned 
with  hours  at  a  time,  and  I  recall  at  least  three  oc¬ 
casions  when  this  was  followed  by  actual  prayer.  In 
s  the  first  instance,  the  honest  exhorter  who  fell  upon  his 
knees  before  my  astonished  eyes,  was  an  advocate  of 
single  tax  upon  land  values.  He  begged,  in  that  indirect 
phraseology  which  is  deemed  appropriate  for  prayer, 
that  “the  sister  might  see  the  beneficent  results  it  would 
o  bring  to  the  poor  who  live  in  the  awful  congested  dis¬ 
tricts  around  this  very  house.” 

The  early  socialists  used  every  method  of  attack,  —  a 
favorite  one  being  the  statement,  doubtless  sometimes 
honestly  made,  that  I  really  was  a  socialist,  but  “too 
5 much  of  a  coward  to  say  so.”  I  remember  one  socialist 
who  habitually  opened  a  very  telling  address  he  was  in 
the  habit  of  giving  upon  the  street  corners,  by  holding 
me  up  as  an  awful  example  to  his  fellow-socialists,  as 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


53 


one  of  their  number  “who  had  been  caught  in  the  toils 
of  capitalism.”  He  always  added  as  a  final  clinching  of 
the  statement,  that  he  knew  what  he  was  talking  about 
because  he  was  a  member  of  the  Hull-House  Men’s 
Club.  When  I  ventured  to  say  to  him  that  not  all  of 
the  thousands  of  people  who  belong  to  a  class  or  club 
at  Hull-House  could  possibly  know  my  personal  opin¬ 
ions,  and  to  mildly  inquire  upon  what  he  founded  his 
assertions,  he  triumphantly  replied  that  I  had  once 
admitted  to  him  that  I  had  read  Sombart  and  Loria,° 
and  that  any  one  of  sound  mind  must  see  the  inevitable 
conclusions  of  such  master  reasonings. 

I  could  multiply  these  two  instances  a  hundred-fold, 
and  possibly  nothing  aided  me  to  stand  on  my  own 
feet  and  to  select  what  seemed  reasonable  from  this 
wilderness  of  dogma,  so  much  as  my  early  encounter 
with  genuine  zeal  and  affectionate  solicitude,  associated 
with  what  I  could  not  accept  as  the  whole  truth. 

I  do  not  wish  to  take  callow  writing  too  seriously, 
but  I  reproduce  from  an  oratorical  contest  the  following 
bit  of  premature  pragmatism,  doubtless  due  much  more 
to  temperament  than  to  perception,  because  I  am  still 
ready  to  subscribe  to  it,  although  the  grandiloquent 
style  is,  I  hope,  a  thing  of  the  past:  “Those  who  believe 
that  Justice  is  but  a  poetical  longing  within  us,  the 
enthusiast  who  thinks  it  will  come  in  the  form  of  a 
millennium,  those  who  see  it  established  by  the  strong 
arm  of  a  hero,  are  not  those  who  have  comprehended 


54  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  vast  truths  of  life.  The  actual  Justice  must  come 
by  trained  intelligence,  by  broadened  sympathies 
toward  the  individual  man  or  woman  who  crosses  our 
path;  one  item  added  to  another  is  the  only  method  by 
s  which  to  build  up  a  conception  lofty  enough  to  be  of 
use  in  the  world.” 

This  schoolgirl  receipt  has  been  tested  in  many  later 
experiences,  the  most  dramatic  of  which  came  when  I 
was  called  upon  by  a  manufacturing  company  to  act  as 
0one  of  three  arbitrators  in  a  perplexing  struggle  between 
themselves,  a  group  of  trade-unionists,  and  a  non-union 
employee  of  their  establishment.  The  non-union  man 
who  was  the  cause  of  the  difficulty  had  ten  years  before 
sided  with  his  employers  in  a  prolonged  strike  and  had 
s  bitterly  fought  the  union.  He  had  been  so  badly  in¬ 
jured  at  that  time,  that  in  spite  of  long  months  of 
hospital  care  he  had  never  afterward  been  able  to  do  a 
full  day’s  work,  although  his  employers  had  retained 
him  for  a  decade  at  full  pay  in  recognition  of  his  loyalty. 
oAt  the  end  of  ten  years  the  once  defeated  union  was 
strong  enough  to  enforce  its  demands  for  a  union  shop, 
and  in  spite  of  the  distaste  of  the  firm  for  the  arrange¬ 
ment,  no  obstacle  to  harmonious  relations  with  the 
union  remained  but  the  refusal  of  the  trade-unionists 
s  to  receive  as  one  of  their  members  the  old  crippled 
employee,  whose  spirit  was  broken  at  last  and  who  was 
now  willing  to  join  the  union  and  to  stand  with  his  old 
enemies  for  the  sake  of  retaining  his  place. 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


55 


But  the  union  men  would  not  receive  “a  traitor,” 
the  firm  flatly  refused  to  dismiss  so  faithful  an  employee, 
the  busy  season  was  upon  them  and  every  one  con¬ 
cerned  had  finally  agreed  to  abide  without  appeal  by 
the  decision  of  the  three  arbitrators.  The  chairman  of 
our  little  arbitration  committee,  a  venerable  judge, 
quickly  demonstrated  that  it  was  impossible  to  collect 
trustworthy  evidence  in  regard  to  the  events  already 
ten  years  old  which  lay  at  the  bottom  of  this  bitterness, 
and  we  soon  therefore  ceased  to  interview  the  conflicting 
witnesses;  the  second  member  of  the  committee  sternly 
bade  the  men  remember  that  the  most  ancient  Hebraic 
authority  gave  no  sanction  for  holding  even  a  just  re¬ 
sentment  for  more  than  seven  years,  and  at  last  we  all 
settled  down  to  that  wearisome  effort  to  secure  the 
inner  consent  of  all  concerned,  upon  which  alone  the 
“mystery  of  justice”  as  Maeterlinck0  has  told  us, 
ultimately  depends.  I  am  not  quite  sure  that  in  the  end 
we  administered  justice,  but  certainly  employers, 
trades-unionists,  and  arbitrators  were  all  convinced  that 
justice  will  have  to  be  established  in  industrial,  affairs 
with  the  same  care  and  patience  which  has  been  neces¬ 
sary  for  centuries  in  order  to  institute  it  in  men’s  civic 
relationships,  although  as  the  judge  remarked  the 
search  must  be  conducted  without  much  help  from 
precedent.  The  conviction  remained  with  me,  that 
however  long  a  time  might  be  required  to  establish 
justice  in  the  new  relationships  of  our  raw  industrialism. 


56  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

it  would  never  be  stable  until  it  bad  received  the  sanc¬ 
tion  of  those  upon  whom  the  present  situation  presses 
so  harshly. 

Towards  the  end  of  our  four  years’  course  we  debated 
5  much  as  to  what  we  were  to  be,  and  long  before  the  end 
of  my  school  days  it  was  quite  settled  in  my  mind  that 
I  should  study  medicine  and  “live  with  the  poor.”  This 
conclusion  of  course  was  the  result  of  many  things, 
perhaps  epitomized  in  my  graduating  essay  on  “  Cassan- 
odra”°  and  her  tragic  fate  “always  to  be  in  the  right, 
and  always  to  be  disbelieved  and  rejected.” 

This  state  of  affairs,  it  may  readily  be  guessed,  the 
essay  held  to  be  an  example  of  the  feminine  trait  of 
mind  called  intuition,  “an  accurate  perception  of  Truth 
sand  Justice,  which  rests  contented  in  itself  and  will 
make  no  effort  to  confirm  itself  or  to  organize  through 
existing  knowledge.”  The  essay  then  proceeds  —  I  am 
forced  to  admit,  with  overmuch  conviction  —  with  the 
statement  that  woman  can  only  “grow  accurate  and 
o  intelligible  by  the  thorough  study  of  at  least  one  branch 
of  physical  science,  for  only  with  eyes  thus  accustomed 
to  the  search  for  truth  can  she  detect  all  self-deceit  and 
fancy  in  herself  and  learn  to  express  herself  without 
dogmatism.”  So  much  for  the  first  part  of  the  thesis, 
s  Having  thus  “gained  accuracy,  would  woman  bring 
th  is  force  to  bear  throughout  morals  and  justice,  then 
she  must  find  in  active  labor  the  promptings  and 
inspirations  that  come  from  growing  insight.”  I  was 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS 


57 

quite  certain  that  by  following  these  directions  care¬ 
fully,  in  the  end  the  contemporary  woman  would  find 
“her  faculties  clear  and  acute  from  the  study  of  science, 
and  her  hand  upon  the  magnetic  chain  of  humanity.” 

This  veneration  for  science  portrayed  in  my  final 
essay  was  doubtless  the  result  of  the  statements  the 
textbooks  were  then  making  of  what  was  called  the 
theory  of  evolution,  the  acceptance  of  which  even  thirty 
years  after  the  publication  of  Darwin’s  “Origin  of 
Species”0  had  about  it  a  touch  of  intellectual  adventure. 
We  knew,  for  instance,  that  our  science  teacher  had 
accepted  this  theory,  but  we  had  a  strong  suspicion  that 
the  teacher  of  Butler’s  “Analogy”0  had  not.  We  chafed 
at  the  meagerness  of  the  college  library  in  this  direction, 
and  I  used  to  bring  back  in  my  handbag  books  belong¬ 
ing  to  an  advanced  brother-in-law  who  had  studied 
medicine  in  Germany  and  who  therefore  was  quite 
emancipated.  The  first  gift  I  made  when  I  came  into 
possession  of  my  small  estate  the  year  after  I  left  school, 
was  a  thousand  dollars  to  the  library  of  Rockford 
College,  with  the  stipulation  that  it  be  spent  for  scien¬ 
tific  books.  In  the  long  vacations  I  pressed  plants, 
stuffed  birds,  and  pounded  rocks  in  some  vague  belief 
that  I  was  approximating  the  new  method,  and  yet 
when  my  stepbrother,  who  was  becoming  a  real  scientist, 
tried  to  carry  me  along  with  him  into  the  merest  out¬ 
skirts  of  the  methods  of  research,  it  at  once  became 
evident  that  I  had  no  aptitude  and  was  unable  to  follow 


58  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

intelligently  Darwin’s  careful  observations  on  the  earth¬ 
worm.  I  made  an  heroic  effort,  although  candor  com¬ 
pels  me  to  state  that  I  never  would  have  finished  if  I 
had  not  been  pulled  and  pushed  by  my  really  ardent 
s  companion,  who  in  addition  to  a  multitude  of  earth¬ 
worms  and  a  fine  microscope,  possessed  untiring  tact 
with  one  of  flagging  zeal. 

As  our  boarding-school  days  neared  the  end,  in  the 
consciousness  of  approaching  separation  we  vowed 
o eternal  allegiance  to  our  “early  ideals,”  and  promised 
each  other  we  would  “never  abandon  them  without 
conscious  justification,”  and  we  often  warned  each 
other  of  “the  perils  of  self-tradition.” 

We  believed,  in  our  sublime  self-conceit,  that  the 
s  difficulty  of  life  would  lie  solely  in  the  direction  of 
losing  these  precious  ideals  of  ours,  of  failing  to  follow 
the  way  of  martyrdom  and  high  purpose  we  had  marked 
out  for  ourselves,  and  we  had  no  notion  of  the  obscure 
paths  of  tolerance,  just  allowance,  and  self-blame 
o wherein,  if  we  held  our  minds  open,  we  might  learn 
something  of  the  mystery  and  complexity  of  life’s 
purposes. 

The  year  after  I  had  left  college  I  came  back,  with  a 
classmate,  to  receive  the  degree  we  had  so  eagerly 
s  anticipated.  Two  of  the  graduating  class  were  also 
ready  and  four  of  us  were  dubbed  B.A.  on  the  very  day 
that  Rockford  Seminary  was  declared  a  college  in  the 
midst  of  tumultuous  anticipations.  Having  had  a  year 


BOARDING-SCHOOL  IDEALS  59 

outside  of  college  walls  in  that  trying  land  between 
vague  hope  and  definite  attainment,  I  had  become  very 
much  sobered  in  my  desire  for  a  degree,  and  was  al¬ 
ready  beginning  to  emerge  from  that  rose-colored  mist 
with  which  the  dream  of  youth  so  readily  envelops  the  5 
future. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  perils  of  self-tradition, 

I  certainly  did  not  escape  them,  for  it  required  eight 
years  —  from  the  time  I  left  Rockford  in  the  summer 
of  1881  until  Hull-House  was  opened  in  the  autumn  of  10 
1889  —  to  formulate  my  convictions  even  in  the  least 
satisfactory  manner,  much  less  to  reduce  them  to  a 
plan  for  action.  During  most  of  that  time  I  was  ab-  v 
solutely  at  sea  so  far  as  any  moral  purpose  was  con¬ 
cerned,  clinging  only  to  the  desire  to  live  in  a  really  1 5 
living  world  and  refusing  to  be  content  with  a  shadowy 
intellectual  or  aesthetic  reflection  of  it. 


CHAPTER  IV 


The  Snare  of  Preparation 

The  winter  after  I  left  school  was  spent  in  the 
Woman’s  Medical  College  of  Philadelphia,  but  the 
development  of  the  spinal  difficulty  which  had  shad¬ 
owed  me  from  childhood  forced  me  into  Dr.  Weir 
5  Mitchell’s  hospital  for  the  late  spring,  and  the  next 
winter  I  was  literally  bound  to  a  bed  in  my  sister’s 
house  for  six  months.  In  spite  of  its  tedium,  the  long 
winter  had  its  mitigations,  for  after  the  first  few  weeks 
I  was  able  to  read  with  a  luxurious  consciousness  of 
xo  leisure,  and  I  remember  opening  the  first  volume  of 
Carlyle’s  “Frederick  the  Great”  with  a  lively  sense  of 
gratitude  that  it  was  not  Gray’s  “Anatomy,”0  having 
found,  like  many  another,  that  general  culture  is  a 
much  easier  undertaking  than  professional  study.  The 
1 5  long  illness  inevitably  put  aside  the  immediate  prose¬ 
cution  of  a  medical  course,  and  although  I  had  passed 
my  examinations  creditably  enough  in  the  required 
subjects  for  the  first  year,  I  was  very  glad  to  have  a 
physician’s  sanction  for  giving  up  clinics  and  dissecting 
20  rooms  and  to  follow  his  prescription  of  spending  the 
next  two  years  in  Europe. 

Before  I  returned  to  America  I  had  discovered  that 

6o 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION  61 

there  were  other  genuine  reasons  for  living  among  the 
poor  than  that  of  practicing  medicine  upon  them,  and 
my  brief  foray  into  the  profession  was  never  resumed. 

The  long  illness  left  me  in  a  state  of  nervous  ex¬ 
haustion  with  which  I  struggled  for  years,  traces  of  it 
remaining  long  after  Hull-House  was  opened  in  1889. 
At  the  best  it  allowed  me  but  a  limited  amount  of 
energy,  so  that  doubtless  there  was  much  nervous  de¬ 
pression  at  the  foundation  of  the  spiritual  struggles 
which  this  chapter  is  forced  to  record.  However,  it 
could  not  have  been  all  due  to  my  health,  for  as  my 
wise  little  notebook  sententiously  remarked,  “In  his 
own  way  each  man  must  struggle,  lest  the  moral  law 
become  a  far-off  abstraction  utterly  separated  from  his 
active  life.” 

It  would,  of  course,  be  impossible  to  remember  that 
some  of  these  struggles  ever  took  place  at  all,  were  it 
not  for  these  selfsame  notebooks,  in  which,  however,  I 
no  longer  wrote  in  moments  of  high  resolve,  but  judging 
from  the  internal  evidence  afforded  by  the  books  them¬ 
selves,  only  in  moments  of  deep  depression  when  over¬ 
whelmed  by  a  sense  of  failure. 

One  of  the  most  poignant  of  these  experiences,  which 
occurred  during  the  first  few  months  after  our  landing 
upon  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  was  on  a  Saturday 
night,  when  I  received  an  ineradicable  impression  of  the 
wretchedness  of  East  London,  and  also  saw  for  the  first 
time  the  overcrowded  quarters  of  a  great  city  at  mid- 


62  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


night.  A  small  party  of  tourists  were  taken  to  the  East 
End°  by  a  city  missionary  to  witness  the  Saturday  night 
sale  of  decaying  vegetables  and  fruit,  which,  owing  to 
the  Sunday  laws  in  London,  could  not  be  sold  until 
5  Monday,  and,  as  they  were  beyond  safe  keeping,  were 
disposed  of  at  auction  as  late  as  possible  on  Saturday 
night.  On  Mile  End  Road,°  from  the  top  of  an  omnibus 
which  paused  at  the  end  of  a  dingy  street  lighted  by 
only  occasional  flares  of  gas,  we  saw  two  huge  masses  of 
o  ill-clad  people  clamoring  around  two  hucksters’  carts. 
They  were  bidding  their  farthings  and  ha’pennies  for  a 
vegetable  held  up  by  the  auctioneer,  which  he  at  last 
scornfully  flung,  with  a  gibe  for  its  cheapness,  to  the 
successful  bidder.  In  the  momentary  pause  only  one 
5  man  detached  himself  from  the  groups.  He  had  bidden 
in  a  cabbage,  and  when  it  struck  his  hand,  he  instantly 
sat  down  on  the  curb,  tore  it  with  his  teeth,  and  hastily 
devoured  it,  unwashed  and  uncooked  as  it  was.  He 
and  his  fellows  were  types  of  the  “submerged  tenth,” 
o  as  our  missionary  guide  told  us,  with  some  little  satis¬ 
faction  in  the  then  new  phrase,  and  he  further  added 
that  so  many  of  them  could  scarcely  be  seen  in  one  spot 
save  at  this  Saturday  night  auction,  the  desire  for  cheap 
food  being  apparently  the  one  thing  which  could  move 
5  them  simultaneously.  They  were  huddled  into  ill- 
fitting,  cast-off  clothing,  the  ragged  finery  which  one 
sees  only  in  East  London.  Their  pale  faces  were 
dominated  by  that  most  unlovely  of  human  expressions, 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION  63 

the  cunning  and  shrewdness  of  the  bargain-hunter  who 
starves  if  he  cannot  make  a  successful  trade,  and  yet 
the  final  impression  was  not  of  ragged,  tawdry  clothing 
nor  of  pinched  and  sallow  faces,  but  of  myriads  of 
hands,  empty,  pathetic,  nerveless,  and  workworn,  show-  5 
ing  white  in  the  uncertain  light  of  the  street,  and  clutch¬ 
ing  forward  for  food  which  was  already  unfit  to  eat. 

Perhaps  nothing  is  so  fraught  with  significance  as  the 
human  hand,  this  oldest  tool  with  which  man  has  dug 
his  way  from  savagery,  and  with  which  he  is  constantly  10 
groping  forward.  I  have  never  since  been  able  to  see  a 
number  of  hands  held  upward,  even  when  they  are 
moving  rhythmically  in  a  calisthenic  exercise,  or  when 
they  belong  to  a  class  of  chubby  children  who  wave 
them  in  eager  response  to  a  teacher’s  query,  without  a  1 5 
certain  revival  of  this  memory,  a  clutching  at  the  heart 
reminiscent  of  the  despair  and  resentment  which  seized 
me  then. 

For  the  following  weeks  I  went  about  London  almost 
furtively,  afraid  to  look  down  narrow  streets  and  alleys  20 
lest  they  disclose  again  this  hideous  human  need  and 
suffering.  I  carried  with  me  for  days  at  a  time  that 
curious  surprise  we  experience  when  we  first  come  back 
into  the  streets  after  days  given  over  to  sorrow  and 
death;  we  are  bewildered  that  the  world  should  be  going  2  5 
on  as  usual  and  unable  to  determine  which  is  real,  the 
inner  pang  or  the  outward  seeming.  In  time  all  huge 
London  came  to  seem  unreal  save  the  poverty  in  its 


64  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

East  End.  During  the  following  two  years  on  the 
continent,  while  I  was  irresistibly  drawn  to  the  poorer 
quarters  of  each  city,  nothing  among  the  beggars  of 
South  Italy  nor  among  the  saltminers  of  Austria  carried 
5  with  it  the  same  conviction  of  human  wretchedness 
which  was  conveyed  by  this  momentary  glimpse  of  an 
East  London  street.  It  was,  of  course,  a  most  frag¬ 
mentary  and  lurid  view  of  the  poverty  of  East  London, 
and  quite  unfair.  I  should  have  been  shown  either  less 
oor  more,  for  I  went  away  with  no  notion  of  the  hun¬ 
dreds  of  men  and  women  who  had  gallantly  identified 
their  fortunes  with  these  empty-handed  people,  and 
who,  in  church  and  chapel,  “relief  works,”  and  chari¬ 
ties,  were  at  least  making  an  effort  towards  its  mitiga- 
s  tion. 

Our  visit  was  made  in  November,  1883,  the  very  year 
when  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  exposure0  started  “The 
Bitter  Cry  of  Outcast  London,”  and  the  conscience  of 
England  was  stirred  as  never  before  oyer  this  joyless 
o  city  in  the  East  End  of  its  capital.  Even  then,  vigorous 
and  drastic  plans  were  being  discussed,  and  a  splendid 
program  of  municipal  reforms  was  already  dimly  out¬ 
lined.  Of  all  these,  however,  I  had  heard  nothing  but 
the  vaguest  rumor. 

5  No  comfort  came  to  me  then  from  any  source,  and 
the  painful  impression  was  increased  because  at  the 
very  moment  of  looking  down  the  East  London  street 
from  the  top  of  the  omnibus,  I  had  been  sharply  and 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION  65 

painfully  reminded  of  “The  Vision  of  Sudden  Death” 
which  had  confronted  De  Quincey  one  summer’s  night 
as  he  was  being  driven  through  rural  England  on  a  high 
mail  coach.  Two  absorbed  lovers  suddenly  appear  be¬ 
tween  the  narrow,  blossoming  hedgerows  in  the  direct 
path  of  the  huge  vehicle  which  is  sure  to  crush  them  to 
their  death.  De  Quincey  tries  to  send  them  a  warning 
shout,  but  finds  himself  unable  to  make  a  sound  be¬ 
cause  his  mind  is  hopelessly  entangled  in  an  endeavor 
to  recall  the  exact  lines  from  the  “Iliad”  which  describe 
the  great  cry  with  which  Achilles  alarmed  all  Asia 
militant.  Only  after  his  memory  responds  is  his  will  re¬ 
leased  from  its  momentary  paralysis,  and  he  rides  on 
through  the  fragrant  night  with  the  horror  of  the  es¬ 
caped  calamity  thick  upon  him,  but  he  also  bears  with 
him  the  consciousness  that  he  had  given  himself  over  so 
many  years  to  classic  learning  —  that  when  suddenly 
called  upon  for  a  quick  decision  in  the  world  of  life  and 
death,  he  had  been  able  to  act  only  through  a  literary 
suggestion. 

This  is  what  we  were  all  doing,  lumbering  our  minds 
with  literature  that  only  served  to  cloud  the  really  vital 
situation  spread  before  our  eyes.  It  seemed  to  me  too 
preposterous  that  in  my  first  view  of  the  horror  of  East 
London  I  should  have  recalled  De  Quincey’s  literary 
description  of  the  literary  suggestion  which  had  once 
paralyzed  him.  In  my  disgust  it  all  appeared  a  hateful, 
vicious  circle  which  even  the  apostles  of  culture  them- 


66  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


selves  admitted,  for  had  not  one  of  the  greatest  among 
the  moderns  plainly  said  that  “conduct,  and  not 
culture,  is  three  fourths  of  human  life”? 

For  two  years  in  the  midst  of  my  distress  over  the 
5  poverty  which,  thus  suddenly  driven  into  my  con¬ 
sciousness,  had  become  to  me  the  “  Weltschmerz,”0 
there  was  mingled  a  sense  of  futility,  of  misdirected 
energy,  the  belief  that  the  pursuit  of  cultivation  would 
not  in  the  end  bring  either  solace  or  relief.  I  gradually 
o  reached  a  conviction  that  the  first  generation  of  college 
women  had  taken  their  learning  too  quickly,  had  de¬ 
parted  too  suddenly  from  the  active,  emotional  life  led 
by  their  grandmothers  and  great-grandmothers;  that 
the  contemporary  education  of  young  women  had 
5  developed  too  exclusively  the  power  of  acquiring  knowl¬ 
edge  and  of  merely  receiving  impressions;  that  some¬ 
where  in  the  process  of  “being  educated”  they  had  lost 
that  simple  and  almost  automatic  response  to  the 
human  appeal,  that  old  healthful  reaction  resulting  in 
o  activity  from  the  mere  presence  of  suffering  or  of  help¬ 
lessness;  that  they  are  so  sheltered  and  pampered  they 
have  no  chance  even  to  make  “the  great  refusal.” 

In  the  German  and  French  pensions ,°  which  twenty- 
five  years  ago  were  crowded  with  American  mothers  and 
5  their  daughters  who  had  crossed  the  seas  in  search  of 
culture,  one  often  found  the  mother  making  real  con¬ 
nection  with  the  life  about  her,  using  her  inadequate 
German  with  great  fluency,  gayly  measuring  the 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION  67 


enormous  sheets  or  exchanging  recipes  with  the  German 
Hausfrau,0  visiting  impartially  the  nearest  kindergarten 
and  market,  making  an  atmosphere  of  her  own,  hearty 
and  genuine  as  far  as  it  went,  in  the  house  and  on  the 
street.  On  the  other  hand,  her  daughter  was  critical 
and  uncertain  of  her  linguistic  acquirements,  and  only 
at  ease  when  in  the  familiar  receptive  attitude  afforded 
by  the  art  gallery  and  the  opera  house.  In  the  latter 
she  was  swayed  and  moved,  appreciative  of  the  power 
and  charm  of  the  music,  intelligent  as  to  the  legend  and 
poetry  of  the  plot,  finding  use  for  her  trained  and 
developed  powers  as  she  sat  “ being  cultivated”  in  the 
familiar  atmosphere  of  the  classroom  which  had,  as  it 
were,  become  sublimated  and  romanticized. 

I  remember  a  happy  busy  mother  who,  complacent 
with  the  knowledge  that  her  daughter  daily  devoted 
four  hours  to  her  music,  looked  up  from  her  knitting  to 
say,  “  If  I  had  had  your  opportunities  when  I  was  young, 
my  dear,  I  should  have  been  a  very  happy  girl.  I 
always  had  musical  talent,  but  such  training  as  I  had, 
foolish  little  songs  and  waltzes  and  not  time  for  half  an 
hour’s  practice  a  day.” 

The  mother  did  not  dream  of  the  sting  her  words  left 
and  that  the  sensitive  girl  appreciated  only  too  well  that 
her  opportunities  were  fine  and  unusual,  but  she  also 
knew  that  in  spite  of  some  facility  and  much  good 
teaching  she  had  no  genuine  talent  and  never  would 
fulfill  the  expectations  of  her  friends.  She  looked  back 


68  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


upon  her  mother’s  girlhood  with  positive  envy  because 
it  was  so  full  of  happy  industry  and  extenuating  ob¬ 
stacles,  with  undisturbed  opportunity  to  believe  that 
her  talents  were  unusual.  The  girl  looked  wistfully  at 
5  her  mother,  but  had  not  the  courage  to  cry  out  what 
was  in  her  heart:  “I  might  believe  I  had  unusual  talent 
if  I  did  not  know  what  good  music  was;  I  might  enjoy 
half  an  hour’s  practice  a  day  if  I  were  busy  and  happy 
the  rest  of  the  time.  You  do  not  know  what  life  means 
3 when  all  the  difficulties  are  removed!  I  am  simply 
smothered  and  sickened  with  advantages.  It  is  like 
eating  a  sweet  dessert  the  first  thing  in  the  morning.” 

This,  then,  was  the  difficulty,  this  sweet  dessert  in 
the  morning  and  the  assumption  that  the  sheltered, 
5  educated  girl  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  bitter  poverty 
and  the  social  maladjustment  which  is  all  about  her, 
and  which,  after  all,  cannot  be  concealed,  for  it  breaks 
through  poetry  and  literature  in  a  burning  tide  which 
overwhelms  her;  it  peers  at  her  in  the  form  of  heavy- 
o  laden  market  women  and  underpaid  street  laborers, 
gibing  her  with  a  sense  of  her  uselessness. 

I  recall  one  snowy  morning  in  Saxe-Coburg,  looking 
from  the  window  of  our  little  hotel  upon  the  town 
square,  that  we  saw  crossing  and  recrossing  it  a  single 
5  file  of  women  with  semicircular  heavy  wooden  tanks 
fastened  upon  their  backs.  They  were  carrying  in  this 
primitive  fashion  to  a  remote  cooling  room  these  tanks 
filled  with  a  hot  brew  incident  to  one  stage  of  beer 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION  69 

making.  The  women  were  bent  forward,  not  only  under 
the  weight  which  they  were  bearing,  but  because  the 
tanks  were  so  high  that  it  would  have  been  impossible 
for  them  to  have  lifted  their  heads.  Their  faces  and 
hands,  reddened  in  the  cold  morning  air,  showed  clearly 
the  white  scars  where  they  had  previously  been  scalded 
by  the  hot  stuff  which  splashed  if  they  stumbled  ever  so 
little  on  their  way.  Stung  into  action  by  one  of  those 
sudden  indignations  against  cruel  conditions  which  at 
times  fill  the  young  with  unexpected  energy,  I  found 
myself  across  the  square,  in  company  with  mine  host, 
interviewing  the  phlegmatic  owner  of  the  brewery  who 
received  us  with  exasperating  indifference,  or  rather  re¬ 
ceived  me,  for  the  innkeeper  mysteriously  slunk  away 
as  soon  as  the  great  magnate  of  the  town  began  to 
speak.  I  went  back  to  a  breakfast  for  which  I  had  lost 
my  appetite,  as  I  had  for  Gray’s  “Life  of  Prince  Albert”0 
and  his  wonderful  tutor,  Baron  Stockmar,  which  I  had 
been  reading  late  the  night  before.  The  book  had  lost 
its  fascination;  how  could  a  good  man,  feeling  so  keenly 
his  obligation  “to  make  princely  the  mind  of  his  prince,” 
ignore  such  conditions  of  life  for  the  multitude  of 
humble,  hard-working  folk?  We  were  spending  two 
months  in  Dresden0  that  winter,  given  over  to  much 
reading  of  “The  History  of  Art”  and  to  much  visiting 
of  its  art  gallery  and  opera  house,  and  after  such  an 
experience  I  would  invariably  suffer  a  moral  revulsion 
against  this  feverish  search  after  culture.  It  was  doubt- 


70  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

less  in  such  moods  that  I  founded  my  admiration  for 
Albrecht  Diirer,0  taking  his  wonderful  pictures,  how¬ 
ever,  in  the  most  unorthodox  manner,  merely  as  human 
documents.  I  was  chiefly  appealed  to  by  his  unwilling- 
5  ness  to  lend  himself  to  a  smooth  and  cultivated  view  of 
life,  by  his  determination  to  record  its  frustrations  and 
even  the  hideous  forms  which  darken  the  day  for  our 
human  imagination  and  to  ignore  no  human  complica¬ 
tions.  I  believed  that  his  canvases  intimated  the  coming 
o  religious  and  social  changes  of  the  Reformation  and  the 
peasants’  wars,0  that  they  were  surcharged  with  pity 
for  the  downtrodden,  that  his  sad  knights,  gravely 
standing  guard,  were  longing  to  avert  that  shedding  of 
blood  which  is  sure  to  occur  when  men  forget  how  com- 
5  plicated  life  is  and  insist  upon  reducing  it  to  logical 
dogmas. 

The  largest  sum  of  money  that  I  ever  ventured  to 
spend  in  Europe  was  for  an  engraving  of  his  “St. 
Hubert,”  the  background  of  which  was  said  to  be  from 
oan  original  Dtirer  plate.  There  is  little  doubt,  I  am 
afraid,  that  the  background  as  well  as  the  figures  “were 
put  in  at  a  later  date,”  but  the  purchase  at  least 
registered  the  high-water  mark  of  my  enthusiasm. 

The  wonder  and  beauty  of  Italy  later  brought  healing 
5  and  some  relief  to  the  paralyzing  sense  of  the  futility  of 
all  artistic  and  intellectual  effort  when  disconnected 
from  the  ultimate  test  of  the  conduct  it  inspired.  Ihe 
serene  and  soothing  touch  of  history  also  aroused  old 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION 


7 1 


enthusiasms,  although  some  of  their  manifestations 
were  such  as  one  smiles  over  more  easily  in  retrospection 
than  at  the  moment.  I  fancy  that  it  was  no  smiling 
matter  to  several  people  in  our  party,  whom  I  induced 
to  walk  for  three  miles  in  the  hot  sunshine  beating  down 
upon  the  Roman  Campagna,0  that  we  might  enter  the 
Eternal  City  on  foot  through  the  Porta  del  Popolo,0  as 
pilgrims  had  done  for  centuries.  To  be  sure,  we  had 
really  entered  Rome  the  night  before,  but  the  railroad 
station  and  the  hotel  might  have  been  anywhere  else, 
and  we  had  been  driven  beyond  the  walls  after  break¬ 
fast  and  stranded  at  the  very  spot  where  the  pilgrims 
always  said  “Ecco  Roma,”°  as  they  caught  the  first 
glimpse  of  St.  Peter’s  dome.  This  melodramatic  en¬ 
trance  into  Rome,  or  rather  pretended  entrance,  was 
the  prelude  to  days  of  enchantment,  and  I  returned  to 
Europe  two  years  later  in  order  to  spend  a  winter  there 
and  to  carry  out  a  great  desire  to  systematically  study 
the  Catacombs.0  In  spite  of  my  distrust  of  “advan¬ 
tages”  I  was  apparently  not  yet  so  cured  but  that  I 
wanted  more  of  them. 

The  two  years  which  elapsed  before  I  again  found 
myself  in  Europe  brought  their  inevitable  changes. 
Family  arrangements  had  so  come  about  that  I  had 
spent  three  or  four  months  of  each  of  the  intervening 
winters  in  Baltimore,  where  I  seemed  to  have  reached 
the  nadir  of  my  nervous  depression  and  sense  of  mal¬ 
adjustment,  in  spite  of  my  interest  in  the  fascinating 


72  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

lectures  given  there  by  Lanciani0  of  Rome,  and  a 
definite  course  of  reading  under  the  guidance  of  a  Johns 
Hopkins0  lecturer  upon  the  United  Italy  movement.  In 
the  latter  I  naturally  encountered  the  influence  of 
sMazzini,  which  was  a  source  of  great  comfort  to  me, 
although  perhaps  I  went  too  suddenly  from  a  con¬ 
templation  of  his  wonderful  ethical  and  philosophical 
appeal  to  the  workingmen  of  Italy,  directly  to  the 
lecture  rooms  at  Johns  Hopkins  University,  for  I  was 
i  o  certainly  much  disillusioned  at  this  time  as  to  the 
effect  of  intellectual  pursuits  upon  moral  development. 

The  summers  were  spent  in  the  old  home  in  northern 
Illinois,  and  one  Sunday  morning  I  received  the  rite  of 
baptism  and  became  a  member  of  the  Presbyterian 

1  s  church  in  the  village.  At  this  time  there  was  certainly 

no  outside  pressure  pushing  me  towards  such  a  de¬ 
cision,  and  at  twenty-five  one  does  not  ordinarily  take 
such  a  step  from  a  mere  desire  to  conform.  While  I  was 
not  conscious  of  any  emotional  “conversion,”  I  took 
20  upon  myself  the  outward  expressions  of  the  religious 
life  with  all  humility  and  sincerity.  It  was  doubtless 
true  that  I  was 

“Weary  of  myself  and  sick  of  asking 
What  I  am  and  what  I  ought  to  be,” 

2  5  and  that  various  cherished  safeguards  and  claims  to 

self-dependence  had  been  broken  into  by  many  piteous 
failures.  But  certainly  I  had  been  brought  to  the  con- 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION 


73 


elusion  that  “sincerely  to  give  up  one’s  conceit  or  hope 
of  being  good  in  one’s  own  right  is  the  only  door  to  the 
Universe’s  deeper  reaches.”  Perhaps  the  young  clergy¬ 
man  recognized  this  as  the  test  of  the  Christian  temper; 
at  any  rate  he  required  little  assent  to  dogma  or  miracle, 
and  assured  me  that  while  both  the  ministry  and  the 
officers  of  his  church  were  obliged  to  subscribe  to 
doctrines  of  well-known  severity,  the  faith  required  of 
the  laity  was  almost  early  Christian  in  its  simplicity.  I 
was  conscious  of  no  change  from  my  childish  accept¬ 
ance  of  the  teachings  of  the  Gospels,  but  at  this  moment 
something  persuasive  within  made  me  long  for  an  out¬ 
ward  symbol  of  fellowship,  some  bond  of  peace,  some 
blessed  spot  where  unity  of  spirit  might  claim  right  of 
way  over  all  differences.  There  was  also  growing  within 
me  an  almost  passionate  devotion  to  the  ideals  of 
democracy,  and  when  in  all  history  had  these  ideals  been 
so  thrillingly  expressed  as  when  the  faith  of  the  fisher¬ 
man  and  the  slave  had  been  boldly  opposed  to  the  ac¬ 
cepted  moral  belief  that  the  well-being  of  a  privileged 
few  might  justly  be  built  upon  the  ignorance  and  sacri¬ 
fice  of  the  many?  Who  was  I,  with  my  dreams  of 
universal  fellowship,  that  I  did  not  identify  myself 
with  the  institutional  statement  of  this  belief,  as  it 
stood  in  the  little  village  in  which  I  was  born,  and  with¬ 
out  which  testimony  in  each  remote  hamlet  of  Christen¬ 
dom  it  would  be  so  easy  for  the  world  to  slip  back  into 
the  doctrines  of  selection  and  aristocracy? 


74  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

In  one  of  the  intervening  summers  between  these 
European  journeys  I  visited  a  western  state  where  I 
had  formerly  invested  a  sum  of  money  in  mortgages. 
I  was  much  horrified  by  the  wretched  conditions  among 
5  the  farmers,  which  had  resulted  from  a  long  period  of 
drought,  and  one  forlorn  picture  was  fairly  burned  into 
my  mind.  A  number  of  starved  hogs  —  collateral  for  a 
promissory  note  —  were  huddled  into  an  open  pen. 
Their  backs  were  humped  in  a  curious,  camel-like 
o  fashion,  and  they  were  devouring  one  of  their  own 
number,  the  latest  victim  of  absolute  starvation  or 
possibly  merely  the  one  least  able  to  defend  himself 
against  their  voracious  hunger.  The  farmer’s  wife 
looked  on  indifferently,  a  picture  of  despair  as  she  stood 
5  in  the  door  of  the  bare,  crude  house,  and  the  two  chil¬ 
dren  behind  her,  whom  she  vainly  tried  to  keep  out  of 
sight,  continually  thrust  forward  their  faces  almost 
covered  by  masses  of  coarse,  sunburned  hair,  and  their 
little  bare  feet  so  black,  so  hard,  the  great  cracks  so 
o  filled  with  dust  that  they  looked  like  flattened  hoofs. 
The  children  could  not  be  compared  to  anything  so 
joyous  as  satyrs,  although  they  appeared  but  half¬ 
human.  It  seemed  to  me  quite  impossible  to  receive 
interest  from  mortgages  placed  upon  farms  which  might 
5  at  any  season  be  reduced  to  such  conditions,  and  with 
great  inconvenience  to  my  agent  and  doubtless  with 
hardship  to  the  farmers,  as  speedily  as  possible  I  with¬ 
drew  all  my  investment.  But  something  had  to  be 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION 


75 


done  with  the  money,  and  in  my  reaction  against  un¬ 
seen  horrors  I  bought  a  farm  near  my  native  village  and 
also  a  flock  of  innocent-looking  sheep.  My  partner  in 
the  enterprise  had  not  chosen  the  shepherd’s  lot  as  a 
permanent  occupation,  but  hoped  to  speedily  finish  his 
college  course  upon  half  the  proceeds  of  our  venture. 
This  pastoral  enterprise  still  seems  to  me  to  have  been 
essentially  sound,  both  economically  and  morally,  but 
perhaps  one  partner  depended  too  much  upon  the 
impeccability  of  her  motives  and  the  other  found  him¬ 
self  too  preoccupied  with  study  to  know  that  it  is  not  a 
real  kindness  to  bed  a  sheepfold  with  straw,  for  certainly 
the  venture  ended  in  a  spectacle  scarcely  less  harrowing 
than  the  memory  it  was  designed  to  obliterate.  At 
least  the  sight  of  two  hundred  sheep  with  four  rotting 
hoofs  each,  was  not  reassuring  to  one  whose  conscience 
craved  economic  peace.  A  fortunate  series  of  sales  of 
mutton,  wool,  and  farm  enabled  the  partners  to  end  the 
enterprise  without  loss,  and  they  passed  on,  one  to 
college  and  the  other  to  Europe,  if  not  wiser,  certainly 
sadder  for  the  experience. 

It  was  during  this  second  journey  to  Europe  that  I 
attended  a  meeting  of  the  London  match  girls  who  were 
on  strike  and  who  met  daily  under  the  leadership  of 
well-known  labor  men  of  London.  The  low  wages  that 
were  reported  at  the  meetings,  the  phossy  jaw°  which 
was  described  and  occasionally  exhibited,  the  appear¬ 
ance  of  the  girls  themselves  I  did  not,  curiously  enough, 


76  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

in  any  wise  connect  with  what  was  called  the  labor 
movement,  nor  did  I  understand  the  efforts  of  the 
London  trades-unionists,  concerning  whom  I  held  the 
vaguest  notions.  But  of  course  this  impression  of 
5  human  misery,  was  added  to  the  others  which  were  al¬ 
ready  making  me  so  wretched.  I  think  that  up  to  this 
time  I  was  still  filled  with  the  sense  which  Wells0 
describes  in  one  of  his  young  characters,  that  some¬ 
where  in  Church  or  State  are  a  body  of  authoritative 
o  people  who  will  put  things  to  rights  as  soon  as  they 
really  know  what  is  wrong.  Such  a  young  person  per¬ 
sistently  believes  that  behind  all  suffering,  behind  sin 
and  want,  must  lie  redeeming  magnanimity.  He  may 
imagine  the  world  to  be  tragic  and  terrible,  but  it  never 
s  for  an  instant  occurs  to  him  that  it  may  be  contemptible 
or  squalid  or  self-seeking.  Apparently  I  looked  upon  the 
efforts  of  the  trades-unionists  as  I  did  upon  those  of 
Frederic  Harrison  and  the  Positivists0  whom  I  heard 
the  next  Sunday  in  Newton  Hall,  as  a  manifestation  of 
o“loyalty  to  humanity”  and  an  attempt  to  aid  in  its 
progress.  I  was  enormously  interested  in  the  Positivists 
during  these  European  years;  I  imagined  that  their 
philosophical  conception  of  man’s  religious  develop¬ 
ment  might  include  all  expressions  of  that  for  which  so 
5  many  ages  of  men  have  struggled  and  aspired.  I  vague¬ 
ly  hoped  for  this  universal  comity  when  I  stood  in 
Stonehenge,0  on  the  Acropolis0  in  Athens,  or  in  the 
Sistine  Chapel0  in  the  Vatican.  But  never  did  I  so  de- 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION 


77 


sire  it  as  in  the  cathedrals  of  Winchester,0  Notre  Dame,° 
Amiens.0  One  winter’s  clay  I  traveled  from  Munich  to 
Ulm°  because  I  imagined  from  what  the  art  books  said 
that  the  cathedral  hoarded  a  medieval  statement  of  the 
Positivists’  final  synthesis,  prefiguring  their  conception 
of  a  “Supreme  Humanity.” 

In  this  I  was  not  altogether  disappointed.  The  re¬ 
ligious  history  carved  on  the  choir  stalls  at  Ulm  con¬ 
tained  Greek  philosophers  as  well  as  Hebrew  prophets, 
and  among  the  disciples  and  saints  stood  the  discoverer 
of  music  and  a  builder  of  pagan  temples.  Even  then  I 
was  startled,  forgetting  for  the  moment  the  religious 
revolutions  of  south  Germany,  to  catch  sight  of  a 
window  showing  Luther  as  he  affixed  his  thesis0  on  the 
door  at  Wittenberg,  the  picture  shining  clear  in  the 
midst  of  the  older  glass  of  saint  and  symbol. 

My  smug  notebook  states  that  all  this  was  an  ad¬ 
mission  that  “the  saints  but  embodied  fine  action,” 
and  it  proceeds  at  some  length  to  set  forth  my  hope  for 
a  “cathedral  of  humanity,”  which  should  be  “capacious 
enough  to  house  a  fellowship  of  common  purpose,”  and 
which  should  be  “beautiful  enough  to  persuade  men  to 
hold  fast  to  the  vision  of  human  solidarity.”  It  is  quite 
impossible  for  me  to  reproduce  this  experience  at  Ulm 
unless  I  quote  pages  more  from  the  notebook  in  which 
I  seem  to  have  written  half  the  night,  in  a  fever  of  com¬ 
position  cast  in  ill-digested  phrases  from  Comte.0  It 
doubtless  reflected  also  something  of  the  faith  of  the 


78  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Old  Catholics,  a  charming  group  of  whom  I  had  recently 
'met  in  Stuttgart,  and  the  same  mood  is  easily  traced  in 
my  early  hopes  for  the  Settlement  that  it  should  unite 
in  the  fellowship  of  the  deed  those  of  widely  differing 
5  religious  beliefs. 

The  beginning  of  1887  found  our  little  party  of  three 
in  very  picturesque  lodgings  in  Rome,  and  settled  into 
a  certain  student’s  routine.  But  my  study  of  the  Cata¬ 
combs  was  brought  to  an  abrupt  end  in  a  fortnight  by 
0a  severe  attack  of  sciatic  rheumatism,  which  kept  me 
in  Rome  with  a  trained  nurse  during  many  weeks,  and 
later  sent  me  to  the  Riviera0  to  lead  an  invalid’s  life 
once  more.  Although  my  Catacomb  lore  thus  remained 
hopelessly  superficial,  it  seemed  to  me  a  sufficient  basis 
s  for  a  course  of  six  lectures  which  I  timidly  offered  to  a 
Deaconess’s  Training  School0  during  my  first  winter  in 
Chicago,  upon  the  simple  ground  that  this  early  inter¬ 
pretation  of  Christianity  is  the  one  which  should  be 
presented  to  the  poor,  urging  that  the  primitive  church 
o  was  composed  of  the  poor  and  that  it  was  they  who  took 
the  wonderful  news  to  the  more  prosperous  Romans. 
The  open-minded  head  of  the  school  gladly  accepted  the 
lectures,  arranging  that  the  course  should  be  given  each 
spring  to  her  graduating  class  of  Home  and  Foreign 
5  Missionaries,  and  at  the  end  of  the  third  year  she  in¬ 
vited  me  to  become  one  of  the  trustees  of  the  school.  I 
accepted  and  attended  one  meeting  of  the  board,  but 
never  another,  because  some  of  the  older  members  ob- 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION 


79 


jected  to  my  membership  on  the  ground  that  “no  re¬ 
ligious  instruction  was  given  at  Hull-House.”  I  re¬ 
member  my  sympathy  for  the  embarrassment  in  which 
the  head  of  the  school  was  placed,  but  if  I  needed  com¬ 
fort,  a  bit  of  it  came  to  me  on  my  way  home  from  the 
trustees’  meeting  when  an  Italian  laborer  paid  my  street 
car  fare,  according  to  the  custom  of  our  simpler  neigh¬ 
bors.  Upon  my  inquiry  of  the  conductor  as  to  whom  I 
was  indebted  for  the  little  courtesy,  he  replied  roughly 
enough,  “I  cannot  tell  one  dago  from  another  when 
they  are  in  a  gang,  but  sure,  any  one  of  them  would  do 
it  for  you  as  quick  as  they  would  for  the  Sisters.” 

It  is  hard  to  tell  just  when  the  very  simple  plan 
which  afterward  developed  into  the  Settlement  began 
to  form  itself  in  my  mind.  It  may  have  been  even  be¬ 
fore  I  went  to  Europe  for  the  second  time,  but  I  gradu¬ 
ally  became  convinced  that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  to 
rent  a  house  in  a  part  of  the  city  where  many  primitive 
and  actual  needs  are  found,  in  which  young  women  who 
had  been  given  over  too  exclusively  to  study,  might  re¬ 
store  a  balance  of  activity  along  traditional  lines  and 
learn  of  life  from  life  itself;  where  they  might  try  out 
some  of  the  things  they  had  been  taught  and  put  truth 
to  “the  ultimate  test  of  the  conduct  it  dictates  or  in¬ 
spires.’’  I  do  not  remember  to  have  mentioned  this 
plan  to  any  one  until  we  reached  Madrid  in  April,  1888. 

We  had  been  to  see  a  bull  light  rendered  in  the  most 
magnificent  Spanish  style,  where  greatly  to  my  surprise 


8o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


and  horror,  I  found  that  I  had  seen,  with  comparative 
indifference,  five  bulls  and  many  more  horses  killed. 
The  sense  that  this  was  the  last  survival  of  all  the 
glories  of  the  amphitheater,  the  illusion  that  the  riders 
5  on  the  caparisoned  horses  might  have  been  knights  of 
a  tournament,  or  the  matadore  a  slightly  armed  gladia¬ 
tor  facing  his  martyrdom,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  obscure 
yet  vivid  associations  of  an  historic  survival,  had  carried 
me  beyond  the  endurance  of  any  of  the  rest  of  the  party, 
o  I  finally  met  them  in  the  foyer,  stern  and  pale  with  dis¬ 
approval  of  my  brutal  endurance,  and  but  partially  re¬ 
covered  from  the  faintness  and  disgust  which  the 
spectacle  itself  had  produced  upon  them.  I  had  no  de¬ 
fense  to  offer  to  their  reproaches  save  that  I  had  not 
5  thought  much  about  the  bloodshed;  but  in  the  evening 
the  natural  and  inevitable  reaction  came,  and  in  deep 
chagrin  I  felt  myself  tried  and  condemned,  not  only  by 
this  disgusting  experience  but  by  the  entire  moral 
situation  which  it  revealed.  It  was  suddenly  made 
o  quite  clear  to  me  that  I  was  lulling  my  conscience  by  a 
dreamer’s  scheme,  that  a  mere  paper  reform  had  become 
a  defense  for  continued  idleness,  and  that  I  was  making 
it  a  raison  d’etre0  for  going  on  indefinitely  with  study  and 
travel.  It  is  easy  to  become  the  dupe  of  a  deferred  pur- 
5  pose,  of  the  promise  the  future  can  never  keep,  and  I 
had  fallen  into  the  meanest  type  of  self-deception  in 
making  myself  believe  that  all  this  was  in  preparation 
for  great  things  to  come.  Nothing  less  than  the  moral 


THE  SNARE  OF  PREPARATION 


81 


reaction  following  the  experience  at  a  bull-fight  had 
been  able  to  reveal  to  me  that  so  far  from  following  in 
the  wake  of  a  chariot  of  philanthropic  fire,  I  had  been 
tied  to  the  tail  of  the  veriest  ox-cart  of  self-seeking. 

I  had  made  up  my  mind  that  next  day,  whatever 
happened,  I  would  begin  to  carry  out  the  plan,  if  only 
by  talking  about  it.  I  can  well  recall  the  stumbling  and 
uncertainty  with  which  I  finally  set  it  forth  to  Miss 
Starr,0  my  old-time  school  friend,  who  was  one  of  our 
party.  I  even  dared  to  hope  that  she  might  join  in 
carrying  out  the  plan,  but  nevertheless  I  told  it  in  the 
fear  of  that  disheartening  experience  which  is  so  apt  to 
afflict  our  most  cherished  plans  when  they  are  at  last 
divulged,  when  we  suddenly  feel  that  there  is  nothing 
there  to  talk  about,  and  as  the  golden  dream  slips 
through  our  fingers  we  are  left  to  wonder  at  our  own 
fatuous  belief.  But  gradually  the  comfort  of  Miss 
Starr’s  companionship,  the  vigor  and  enthusiasm  which 
she  brought  to  bear  upon  it,  told  both  in  the  growth  of 
the  plan  and  upon  the  sense  of  its  validity,  so  that  by 
the  time  we  had  reached  the  enchantment  of  the  Al¬ 
hambra,  the  scheme  had  become  convincing  and  tangi¬ 
ble  although  still  most  hazy  in  detail. 

A  month  later  we  parted  in  Paris,  Miss  Starr  to  go 
back  to  Italy,  and  I  to  journey  on  to  London  to  secure 
as  many  suggestions  as  possible  from  those  wonderful 
places  of  which  we  had  heard,  Toynbee  Hall  and  the 
People’s  Palace.0  So  that  it  finally  came  about  that  in 


82  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


June,  1888,  five  years  after  my  first  visit  in  East  London, 
I  found  myself  at  Toynbee  Hall  equipped  not  only  with 
a  letter  of  introduction  from  Canon  Eremantle,0  but 
with  high  expectations  and  a  certain  belief  that  what- 
5  ever  perplexities  and  discouragement  concerning  the 
life  of  the  poor  were  in  store  for  me,  I  should  at  least 
know  something  at  first  hand  and  have  the  solace  of 
daily  activity.  I  had  confidence  that  although  life  it¬ 
self  might  contain  many  difficulties,  the  period  of  mere 
10  passive  receptivity  had  come  to  an  end,  and  I  had  at 
last  finished  with  the  everlasting  “preparation  for  life,” 
however  ill-prepared  I  might  be. 

It  was  not  until  years  afterward  that  I  came  upon 
Tolstoy’s  phrase0  “the  snare  of  preparation,”  which  he 
1 5  insists  we  spread  before  the  feet  of  young  people,  hope¬ 
lessly  entangling  them  in  a  curious  inactivity  at  the 
very  period  of  life  when  they  are  longing  to  construct 
the  world  anew  and  to  conform  it  to  their  own  ideals. 


I 


CHAPTER  V 

First  Days  at  Hull-House 

The  next  January  found  Miss  Starr  and  myself  in 
Chicago,  searching  for  a  neighborhood  in  which  we 
might  put  our  plans  into  execution.  In  our  eagerness 
to  win  friends  for  the  new  undertaking,  we  utilized 
every  opportunity  to  set  forth  the  meaning  of  the  settle-  5 
ment  as  it  had  been  embodied  in  Toynbee  Hall,  al¬ 
though  in  those  days  we  made  no  appeal  for  money, 
meaning  to  start  with  our  own  slender  resources.  From 
the  very  first  the  plan  received  courteous  attention,  and 
the  discussion,  while  often  skeptical,  was  always  friend-  10 
ly.  Professor  Swing0  wrote  a  commendatory  column  in 
the  Evening  Journal ,  and  our  early  speeches  were  re¬ 
ported  quite  out  of  proportion  to  their  worth.  I  recall  a 
spirited  evening  at  the  home  of  Mrs.  Wilmarth,0  which 
was  attended  by  that  renowned  scholar,  Thomas  1 5 
Davidson,0  and  by  a  young  Englishman  who  was  a 
member  of  the  then  new  Fabian  society0  and  to  whom  a 
peculiar  glamour  was  attached  because  he  had  scoured 
knives  all  summer  in  a  camp  of  high-minded  philosophers 
in  the  Adirondacks.  Our  new  little  plan  met  with  criti-  20 
cism,  not  to  say  disapproval,  from  Mr.  Davidson,  who, 
as  nearly  as  1  can  remember,  called  it  “one  of  those 

83 


84  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

unnatural  attempts  to  understand  life  through  coopera¬ 
tive  living.  ” 

It  was  in  vain  we  asserted  that  the  collective  living 
was  not  an  essential  part  of  the  plan,  that  we  would  al- 
5  ways  scrupulously  pay  our  own  expenses,  and  that  at 
any  moment  we  might  decide  to  scatter  through  the 
neighborhood  and  to  live  in  separate  tenements;  he 
still  contended  that  the  fascination  for  most  of  those 
volunteering  residence  would  lie  in  the  collective  living 
o  aspect  of  the  Settlement.  His  contention  was,  of  course, 
essentially  sound;  there  is  a  constant  tendency  for  the 
residents  to  “lose  themselves  in  the  cave  of  their  own 
companionship,’’  as  the  Toynbee  Hall  phrase  goes,  but 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  doubtless  true  that  the  very 
5  companionship,  the  give  and  take  of  colleagues,  is  what 
tends  to  keep  the  Settlement  normal  and  in  touch  with 
“the  world  of  things  as  they  are.”  I  am  happy  to  say 
that  we  never  resented  this  nor  any  other  difference  of 
opinion,  and  that  fifteen  years  later  Professor  Davidson 
o  handsomely  acknowledged  that  the  advantages  of  a 
group  far  outweighed  the  weaknesses  he  had  early 
pointed  out.  He  was  at  that  later  moment  sharing  with 
a  group  of  young  men,  on  the  East  Side  of  New  York, 
his  ripest  conclusions  in  philosophy  and  was  much 
5  touched  by  their  intelligent  interest  and  absorbed  de¬ 
votion.  I  think  that  time  has  also  justified  our  early 
contention  that  the  mere  foothold  of  a  house,  easily 
accessible,  ample  in  space,  hospitable  and  tolerant  in 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  85 

* 

spirit,  situated  in  the  midst  of  the  large  foreign  colonies 
which  so  easily  isolate  themselves  in  American  cities, 
would  be  in  itself  a  serviceable  thing  for  Chicago.  I  am 
not  so  sure  that  we  succeeded  in  our  endeavors  “to 
make  social  intercourse  express  the  growing  sense  of  the 
economic  unity  of  society  and  to  add  the  social  function 
to  democracy.”  But  Hull-House  was  soberly  opened 
on  the  theory  that  the  dependence  of  classes  on  each 
other  is  reciprocal;  and  that  as  the  social  relation  is 
essentially  a  reciprocal  relation,  it  gives  a  form  of  ex¬ 
pression  that  has  peculiar  value. 

In  our  search  for  a  vicinity  in  which  to  settle  we  went 
about  with  the  officers  of  the  compulsory  education 
department,  with  city  missionaries,  and  with  the  news¬ 
paper  reporters  whom  I  recall  as  a  much  older  set  of 
men  than  one  ordinarily  associates  with  that  profession, 
or  perhaps  I  was  only  sent  out  with  the  older  ones  on 
what  they  must  all  have  considered  a  quixotic  mission. 
One  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  late  winter  a  reporter  took 
me  to  visit  a  so-called  anarchist  Sunday  School,  several 
of  which  were  to  be  found  on  the  northwest  side  of  the 
city.  The  young  man  in  charge  was  of  the  German 
student  type,  and  his  face  flushed  with  enthusiasm  as 
he  led  the  children  singing  one  of  Koerner’s  poems.0 
The  newspaper  man,  who  did  not  understand  German, 
asked  me  what  abominable  stuff  they  were  singing,  but 
he  seemed  dissatisfied  with  my  translation  of  the  simple 
words  and  darkly  intimated  that  they  were  “deep 


86  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


ones,”  and  had  probably  “ fooled”  me.  When  I  replied 
that  Koerner  was  an  ardent  German  poet  whose  songs 
inspired  his  countrymen  to  resist  the  aggressions  of 
Napoleon,  and  that  his  bound  poems  were  found  in  the 
5  most  respectable  libraries,  he  looked  at  me  rather  a- 
skanceand  I  then  and  there  had  my  first  intimation  that 
to  treat  a  Chicago  man,  who  is  called  an  anarchist,  as 
you  would  treat  any  other  citizen,  is  to  lay  yourself 
open  to  deep  suspicion. 

o  Another  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  early  spring,  on  the 
way  to  a  Bohemian  mission  in  the  carriage  of  one  of  its 
founders,  we  passed  a  fine  old  house  standing  well  back 
from  the  street,  surrounded  on  three  sides  by  a  broad 
piazza  which  was  supported  by  wooden  pillars  of  ex- 
5  ceptionally  pure  Corinthian  design  and  proportion.  I 
was  so  attracted  by  the  house  that  I  set  forth  to  visit  it 
the  very  next  day,  but  though  I  searched  for  it  then  and 
for  several  days  after,  I  could  not  find  it,  and  at  length 
I  most  reluctantly  gave  up  the  search, 
o  Three  weeks  later,  with  the  advice  of  several  of  the 
oldest  residents  of  Chicago,  including  the  ex-mayor  of 
the  city,  Colonel  Mason,0  who  had  from  the  first  been  a 
warm  friend  to  our  plans,  we  decided  upon  a  location 
somewhere  near  the  junction  of  Blue  Island  Avenue, 
s  Halsted  Street,  and  Harrison  Street.  I  was  surprised 
and  overjoyed  on  the  very  first  day  of  our  search  for 
quarters  to  come  upon  the  hospitable  old  house,  the 
quest  for  which  I  had  so  recently  abandoned.  The 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


87 

house  was  of  course  rented,  the  lower  part  of  it  used  for 
offices  and  storerooms  in  connection  with  a  factory  that 
stood  back  of  it.  However,  after  some  difficulties  were 
overcome,  it  proved  to  be  possible  to  sublet  the  second 
floor  and  what  had  been  the  large  drawing-room  on  the 
first  floor. 

The  house  had  passed  through  many  changes  since 
it  had  been  built  in  1856  for  the  homestead  of  one  of 
Chicago’s  pioneer  citizens,  Mr.  Charles  J.  Hull,  and 
although  battered  by  its  vicissitudes,  was  essentially 
sound.  Before  it  had  been  occupied  by  the  factory,  it 
had  sheltered  a  second-hand  furniture  store,  and  at  one 
time  the  Little  Sisters  of  the  Poor  had  used  it  for  a  home 
for  the  aged.  It  had  a  half-skeptical  reputation  for  a 
haunted  attic,  so  far  respected  by  the  tenants  living  on 
the  second  floor  that  they  always  kept  a  large  pitcher 
full  of  water  on  the  attic  stairs.  Their  explanation  of 
this  custom  was  so  incoherent  that  I  was  sure  it  was  a 
survival  of  the  belief  that  a  ghost  could  not  cross  run¬ 
ning  water,  but  perhaps  that  interpretation  was  only 
my  eagerness  for  finding  folklore. 

The  fine  old  house  responded  kindly  to  repairs,  its 
wide  hall  and  open  fireplaces  always  insuring  it  a 
gracious  aspect.  Its  generous  owner,  Miss  Helen 
Culver,0  in  the  following  spring  gave  us  a  free  leasehold 
of  the  entire  house.  Her  kindness  has  continued 
through  the  years  until  the  group  of  thirteen  buildings, 
which  at  present  comprises  our  equipment,  is  built 


88  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


largely  upon  land  which  Miss  Culver  has  put  at  the 
service  of  the  Settlement  which  bears  Mr.  Hull’s  name. 
In  those  days  the  house  stood  between  an  undertaking 
establishment  and  a  saloon.  “Knight,  Death,  and  the 
5  Devil,”  the  three  were  called  by  a  Chicago  wit,  and 
yet  any  mock  heroics  which  might  be  implied  by  com¬ 
paring  the  Settlement  to  a  knight  quickly  dropped  away 
under  the  genuine  kindness  and  hearty  welcome  ex¬ 
tended  to  us  by  the  families  living  up  and  down  the 
o  street. 

We  furnished  the  house  as  we  would  have  furnished 
it  were  it  in  another  part  of  the  city,  with  the  photo¬ 
graphs  and  other  impedimenta  we  had  collected  in 
Europe,  and  with  a  few  bits  of  family  mahogany. 
5  While  all  the  new  furniture  which  was  bought  was  en¬ 
during  in  quality,  we  were  careful  to  keep  it  in  character 
with  the  fine  old  residence.  Probably  no  young  matron 
ever  placed  her  own  things  in  her  own  house  with  more 
pleasure  than  that  with  which  we  first  furnished  Hull- 
o  House.  We  believed  that  the  Settlement  may  logically 
bring  to  its  aid  all  those  adjuncts  which  the  cultivated 
man  regards  as  good  and  suggestive  of  the  best  life  of 
the  past. 

On  the  i8th  of  September,  1889,  Miss  Starr  and  I 
5  moved  into  it,  with  Miss  Mary  Keyser,  who  began  by 
performing  the  housework,  but  who  quickly  developed 
into  a  very  important  factor  in  the  life  of  the  vicinity 
as  well  as  in  that  of  the  household,  and  whose  death  five 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  89 

years  later  was  most  sincerely  mourned  by  hundreds  of 
our  neighbors.  In  our  enthusiasm  over  “settling,”  the 
first  night  we  forgot  not  only  to  lock  but  to  close  a  side 
door  opening  on  Polk  Street,  and  were  much  pleased  in 
the  morning  to  find  that  we  possessed  a  fine  illustration 
of  the  honesty  and  kindliness  of  our  new  neighbors. 

Our  first  guest  was  an  interesting  young  woman  who 
lived  in  a  neighboring  tenement,  whose  widowed  mother 
aided  her  in  the  support  of  the  family  by  scrubbing  a 
downtown  theater  every  night.  The  mother,  of  English 
birth,  was  well  bred  and  carefully  educated,  but  was  in 
the  midst  of  that  bitter  struggle  which  awaits  so  many 
strangers  in  American  cities  who  find  that  their  social 
position  tends  to  be  measured  solely  by  the  standards 
of  living  they  are  able  to  maintain.  Our  guest  has  long 
since  married  the  struggling  young  lawyer  to  whom  she 
was  then  engaged,  and  he  is  now  leading  his  profession 
in  an  eastern  city.  She  recalls  that  month’s  experience 
always  with  a  sense  of  amusement  over  the  fact  that  the 
succession  of  visitors  who  came  to  see  the  new  Settle¬ 
ment  invariably  questioned  her  most  minutely  con¬ 
cerning  ‘  these  people”  without  once  suspecting  that 
they  were  talking  to  one  who  had  been  identified  with 
the  neighborhood  from  childhood.  I  at  least  was  able 
to  draw  a  lesson  from  the  incident,  and  I  never  addressed 
a  Chicago  audience  on  the  subject  of  the  Settlement  and 
its  vicinity  without  inviting  a  neighbor  to  go  with  me, 
that  I  might  curb  any  hasty  generalization  by  the  con- 


9o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

sciousness  that  I  had  an  auditor  who  knew  the  con¬ 
ditions  more  intimately  than  I  could  hope  to  do. 

Halsted  Street  has  grown  so  familiar  during  twenty 
years  of  residence,  that  it  is  difficult  to  recall  its  gradual 
s  changes,  —  the  withdrawal  of  the  more  prosperous 
Irish  and  Germans,  and  the  slow  substitution  of  Russian 
Jews,  Italians,  and  Greeks.  A  description  of  the  street 
such  as  I  gave  in  those  early  addresses  still  stands  in  my 
mind  as  sympathetic  and  correct. 

i  o  Halsted  Street  is  thirty-two  miles  long,  and  one  of  the  great 
thoroughfares  of  Chicago;  Polk  Street  crosses  it  midway  between  the 
stockyards  to  the  south  and  the  ship-building  yards  on  the  north 
branch  of  the  Chicago  River.  For  the  six  miles  between  these  two 
industries  the  street  is  lined  with  shops  of  butchers  and  grocers,  with 

1  s  dingy  and  gorgeous  saloons,  and  pretentious  establishments  for  the 

sale  of  ready-made  clothing.  Polk  Street,  running  west  from  Halsted 
Street,  grows  rapidly  more  prosperous;  running  a  mile  east  to  State 
Street,  it  grows  steadily  worse,  and  crosses  a  network  of  vice  on  the 
corners  of  Clark  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue.  Hull-House  once  stood  in 

2  o  the  suburbs,  but  the  city  has  steadily  grown  up  around  it  and  its  site 

now  has  corners  on  three  or  four  foreign  colonies.  Between  Halsted 
Street  and  the  river  live  about  ten  thousand  Italians  —  Neapolitans, 
Sicilians,  and  Calabrians,  with  an  occasional  Lombard  or  Venetian. 
To  the  south  on  Twelfth  Street  are  many  Germans,  and  side  streets 

2  5  are  given  over  almost  entirely  to  Polish  and  Russian  Jews.  Still 
farther  south,  these  Jewish  colonies  merge  into  a  huge  Bohemian 
colony,  so  vast  that  Chicago  ranks  as  the  third  Bohemian  city  in  the 
world.  To  the  northwest  are  many  Canadian-French,  clannish  in 
spite  of  their  long  residence  in  America,  and  to  the  north  are  Irish 

30  and  first-generation  Americans.  On  the  streets  directly  west  and 
farther  north  are  well-to-do  English-speaking  families,  many  of  whom 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


9i 

own  their  houses  and  have  lived  in  the  neighborhood  for  years;  one 
man  is  still  living  in  his  old  farmhouse. 

The  policy  of  the  public  authorities  of  never  taking  an  initiative, 
and  always  waiting  to  be  urged  to  do  their  duty,  is  obviously  fatal  in 
a  neighborhood  where  there  is  little  initiative  among  the  citizens.  The  5 
idea  underlying  our  self-government  breaks  down  in  such  a  ward. 
The  streets  are  inexpressibly  dirty,  the  number  of  schools  inadequate, 
sanitary  legislation  unenforced,  the  street  lighting  bad,  the  paving 
miserable  and  altogether  lacking  in  the  alleys  and  smaller  streets, 
and  the  stables  foul  beyond  description.  Hundreds  of  houses  are  10 
unconnected  with  the  street  sewer.  The  older  and  richer  inhabitants 
seem  anxious  to  move  away  as  rapidly  as  they  can  afford  it.  They 
make  room  for  newly  arrived  immigrants  who  are  densely  ignorant  of 
civic  duties.  This  substitution  of  the  older  inhabitants  is  accom¬ 
plished  industrially  also,  in  the  south  and  east  quarters  of  the  ward.  1  5 
The  Jews  and  Italians  do  the  finishing  for  the  great  clothing  manu¬ 
facturers,  formerly  done  by  Americans,  Irish,  and  Germans,  who 
refused  to  submit  to  the  extremely  low  prices  to  which  the  sweating 
system  has  reduced  their  successors.  As  the  design  of  the  sweating 
system  is  the  elimination  of  rent  from  the  manufacture  of  clothing,  20 
the  “outside  work”  is  begun  after  the  clothing  leaves  the  cutter.  An 
unscrupulous  contractor  regards  no  basement  as  too  dark,  no  stable 
loft  too  foul,  no  rear  shanty  too  provisional,  no  tenement  room  too 
small  for  his  workroom,  as  these  conditions  imply  low  rental.  Hence 
these  shops  abound  in  the  worst  of  the  foreign  districts  where  the  2  5 
sweater  easily  finds  his  cheap  basement  and  His  home  finishers. 

The  houses  of  the  ward,  for  the  most  part  wooden,  were  originally 
built  for  one  family  and  are  now  occupied  by  several.  They  are  after 
the  type  of  the  inconvenient  frame  cottages  found  in  the  poorer 
suburbs  twenty  years  ago.  Many  of  them  were  built  where  they  now  3  3 
stand;  others  were  brought  thither  on  rollers,  because  their  previous 
sites  had  been  taken  for  factories.  The  fewer  brick  tenement  build¬ 
ings  which  are  three  or  four  stories  high  are  comparatively  new,  and 
there  are  few  large  tenements.  The  little  wooden  houses  have  a 


92  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

temporary  aspect,  and  for  this  reason,  perhaps,  the  tenement-house 
legislation  in  Chicago  is  totally  inadequate.  Rear  tenements  flourish; 
many  houses  have  no  water  supply  save  the  faucet  in  the  back  yard, 
there  are  no  fire  escapes,  the  garbage  and  ashes  are  placed  in  wooden 
5  boxes  which  are  fastened  to  the  street  pavements.  One  of  the  most 
discouraging  features  about  the  present  system  of  tenement  houses  is 
that  many  are  owned  by  sordid  and  ignorant  immigrants.  The  theory 
that  wealth  brings  responsibility,  that  possession  entails  at  length 
education  and  refinement,  in  these  cases  fails  utterly.  The  children 
o  of  an  Italian  immigrant  owner  may  “shine”  shoes  in  the  street,  and 
his  wife  may  pick  rags  from  the  street  gutter,  laboriously  sorting 
them  in  a  dingy  court.  Wealth  may  do  something  for  her  self-com¬ 
placency  and  feeling  of  consequence;  it  certainly  does  nothing  for  her 
comfort  or  her  children’s  improvement  nor  for  the  cleanliness  of  any 
5  one  concerned.  Another  thing  that  prevents  better  houses  in  Chicago 
is  the  tentative  attitude  of  the  real  estate  men.  Many  unsavory  con¬ 
ditions  are  allowed  to  continue  which  would  be  regarded  with  horror 
if  they  were  considered  permanent.  Meanwhile,  the  wretched  con¬ 
ditions  persist  until  at  least  two  generations  of  children  have  been 
o  born  and  reared  in  them. 

In  every  neighborhood  where  poorer  people  live,  because  rents  are 
supposed  to  be  cheaper  there,  is  an  element  which,  although  uncertain 
in  the  individual,  in  the  aggregate  can  be  counted  upon.  It  is  com¬ 
posed  of  people  of  former  education  and  opportunity  who  have 
5  cherished  ambitions  and  prospects,  but  who  are  caricatures  of  what 
they  meant  to  be —  “hollow  ghosts  which  blame  the  living  men.” 
There  are  times  in  many  lives  when  there  is  a  cessation  of  energy  and 
loss  of  power.  Men  and  women  of  education  and  refinement  come  to 
live  in  a  cheaper  neighborhood  because  they  lack  the  ability  to  make 
o  money,  because  of  ill  health,  because  of  an  unfortunate  marriage,  or 
for  other  reasons  which  do  not  imply  criminality  or  stupidity.  Among 
them  are  those  who,  in  spite  of  untoward  circumstances,  keep  up 
some  sort  of  an  intellectual  life;  those  who  are  “great  for  books,”  as 
their  neighbors  say.  To  such  the  Settlement  may  be  a  genuine  refuge. 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


93 


In  the  very  first  weeks  of  our  residence  Miss  Starr 
started  a  reading  party  in  George  Eliot’s  “Romola,”0 
which  was  attended  by  a  group  of  young  women  who 
followed  the  wonderful  tale  with  unflagging  interest. 
The  weekly  reading  was  held  in  our  little  upstairs  dining 
room,  and  two  members  of  the  club  came  to  dinner  each 
week,  not  only  that  they  might  be  received  as  guests, 
but  that  they  might  help  us  wash  the  dishes  afterwards 
and  so  make  the  table  ready  for  the  stacks  of  Florentine 
photographs. 

Our  “first  resident,”  as  she  gayly  designated  herself, 
was  a  charming  old  lady  who  gave  five  consecutive 
readings  from  Hawthorne  to  a  most  appreciative 
audience,  interspersing  the  magic  tales  most  delightfully 
with  recollections  of  the  elusive  and  fascinating  author. 
Years  before  she  had  lived  at  Brook  Farm  as  a  pupil  of 
the  Ripleys,0  and  she  came  to  us  for  ten  days  because  she 
wished  to  live  once  more  in  an  atmosphere  where  “ideal¬ 
ism  ran  high.”  We  thus  early  found  the  type  of  class 
which  through  all  the  years  has  remained  most  popular 
—  a  combination  of  a  social  atmosphere  with  serious 
study. 

Volunteers  to  the  new  undertaking  came  quickly; 
a  charming  }mung  girl°  conducted  a  kindergarten  in  the 
drawing-room,  coming  regularly  every  morning  from 
her  home  in  a  distant  part  of  the  North  Side  of  the  city. 
Although  a  tablet  to  her  memor}^  has  stood  upon  a 
mantel  shelf  in  Hull-House  for  five  years,  we  still 


94  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

associate  her  most  vividly  with  the  play  of  little  chil¬ 
dren,  first  in  her  kindergarten  and  then  in*her  own 
nursery,  which  furnished  a  veritable  illustration  of 
Victor  Hugo’s  definition  of  heaven,  —  “a  place  where 
s  parents  are  always  young  and  children  always  little.” 
Her  daily  presence  for  the  first  two  years  made  it  quite 
impossible  for  us  to  become  too  solemn  and  self-con¬ 
scious  in  our  strenuous  routine,  for  her  mirth  and  buoy¬ 
ancy  were  irresistible  and  her  eager  desire  to  share  the 
olife  of  the  neighborhood  never  failed,  although  it  was 
often  put  to  a  severe  test.  One  day  at  luncheon  she 
gayly  recited  her  futile  attempt  to  impress  temperance 
principles  upon  the  mind  of  an  Italian  mother,  to  whom 
she  had  returned  a  small  daughter  of  five  sent  to  the 
s  kindergarten  “in  quite  a  horrid  state  of  intoxication” 
from  the  wine-soaked  bread  upon  which  she  had  break¬ 
fasted.  The  mother,  with  the  gentle  courtesy  of  a  South 
Italian,  listened  politely  to  her  graphic  portrayal  of  the 
untimely  end  awaiting  so  immature  a  wine  bibber;  but 
dong  before  the  lecture  was  finished,  quite  unconscious 
of  the  incongruity,  she  hospitably  set  forth  her  best 
wines,  and  when  her  baffled  guest  refused  one  after  the 
other,  she  disappeared,  only  to  quickly  return  with  a 
small  dark  glass  of  whisky,  saying  reassuringly,  “See,  I 
shave  brought  you  the  true  American  drink.”  The 
recital  ended  in  seriocomic  despair,  with  the  rueful 
statement  that  “the  impression  I  probably  made  upon 
her  darkened  mind  was,  that  it  is  the  American  custom 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


95 

to  breakfast  children  on  bread  soaked  in  whisky  instead 
of  light  Italian  wine.” 

That  first  kindergarten  was  a  constant  source  of 
education  to  us.  We  were  much  surprised  to  find  social 
distinctions  even  among  its  lambs,  although  greatly  5 
v  amused  with  the  neat  formulation  made  by  the  superior 
little  Italian  boy  who  refused  to  sit  beside  uncouth  little 
Angelina  because  “we  eat  our  macaroni  this  way,”  — 
imitating  the  movement  of  a  fork  from  a  plate  to  his 
mouth,  —  “and  she  eat  her  macaroni  this  way,”  hold-  10 
ing  his  hand  high  in  the  air  and  throwing  back  his  head, 
that  his  wide-open  mouth  might  receive  an  imaginary 
cascade.  Angelina  gravely  nodded  her  little  head  in 
approval  of  this  distinction  between  gentry  and  peasant. 
“But  isn’t  it  astonishing  that  merely  table  manners  are  is 
made  such  a  test  all  the  way  along?”  was  the  comment 
of  their  democratic  teacher.  Another  memory  which 
refuses  to  be  associated  with  death,  which  came  to  her 
all  too  soon,  is  that  of  the  young  girl  who  organized  our 
first  really  successful  club  of  boys,  holding  their  fas-  20 
cinated  interest  by  the  old  chivalric  tales,  set  forth  so 
dramatically  and  vividly  that  checkers  and  jackstraws 
were  abandoned  by  all  the  other  clubs  on  Boys’  Day, 
that  their  members  might  form  a  listening  fringe  to 
“The  Young  Heroes.”  25 

I  met  a  member  of  the  latter  club  one  day  as  he  flung 
himself  out  of  the  House  in  the  rage  by  which  an 
emotional  boy  hopes  to  keep  from  shedding  tears. 


96  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

‘‘There  is  no  use  coming  here  any  more,  Prince  Roland0 
is  dead,”  he  gruffly  explained  as  we  passed.  We  en¬ 
couraged  the  younger  boys  in  tournaments  and  dramat¬ 
ics  of  all  sorts,  and  we  somewhat  fatuously  believed  that 
s  boys  who  were  early  interested  in  adventurers  or  ex¬ 
plorers  might  later  want  to  know  the  lives  of  living 
statesmen  and  inventors.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  the 
boys  quickly  responded  to  such  a  program,  and  that  the 
only  difficulty  lay  in  finding  leaders  who  were  able  to 
o  carry  it  out.  This  difficulty  has  been  with  us  through 
all  the  years  of  growth  and  development  in  the  Boys’ 
Club  until  now,  with  its  five-story  building,  its  splendid 
equipment  of  shops,  of  recreation  and  study  rooms, 
that  group  alone  is  successful  which  commands  the 
5  services  of  a  resourceful  and  devoted  leader. 

The  dozens  of  younger  children  who  from  the  first 
came  to  Hull-House  were  organized  into  groups  which 
were  not  quite  classes  and  not  quite  clubs.  The  value  of 
these  groups  consisted  almost  entirely  in  arousing  a 
o  higher  imagination  and  in  giving  the  children  the  op¬ 
portunity  which  they  could  not  have  in  the  crowded 
schools,  for  initiative  and  for  independent  social  re¬ 
lationships.  The  public  schools  then  contained  little 
hand  work  of  any  sort,  so  that  naturally  any  instruction 
5  which  we  provided  for  the  children  took  the  direction 
of  this  supplementary  work.  But  it  required  a 
constant  effort  that  the  pressure  of  poverty  itself  should 
not  defeat  the  educational  aim.  The  Italian  girls  in  the 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


97 


sewing  classes  would  count  that  day  lost  when  they 
could  not  carry  home  a  garment,  and  the  insistence  that 
it  should  be  neatly  made  seemed  a  super-refinement  to 
those  in  dire  need  of  clothing. 

As  these  clubs  have  been  continued  during  the  twenty 
years  they  have  developed  classes  in  the  many  forms  of 
handicraft  which  the  newer  education  is  so  rapidly 
adapting  for  the  delight  of  children;  but  they  still  keep 
their  essentially  social  character  and  still  minister  to 
that  large  number  of  children  who  leave  school  the  very 
week  they  are  fourteen  years  old,  only  too  eager  to  close 
the  schoolroom  door  forever  on  a  tiresome  task  that  is 
at  last  well  over.  It  seems  to  us  important  that  these 
children  shall  find  themselves  permanently  attached  to 
a  House  that  offers  them  evening  clubs  and  classes  with 
their  old  companions,  that  merges  as  easily  as  possible 
the  school  life  into  the  working  life  and  does  what  it 
can  to  find  places  for  the  bewildered  young  things  look¬ 
ing  for  work.  A  large  proportion  of  the  delinquent  boys 
brought  into  the  juvenile  court  in  Chicago  are  the  oldest 
sons  in  large  families  whose  wages  are  needed  at  home. 
The  grades  from  which  many  of  them  leave  school,  as 
the  records  show,  are  piteously  far  from  the  seventh  and 
eighth  where  the  very  first  instruction  in  manual  train¬ 
ing  is  given,  nor  have  they  been  caught  by  any  other 
abiding  interest. 

In  spite  of  these  flourishing  clubs  for  children  early 
established  at  Hull-House,  and  the  fact  that  our  first 


98  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

organized  undertaking  was  a  kindergarten,  we  were 
very  insistent  that  the  Settlement  should  not  be 
primarily  for  the  children,  and  that  it  was  absurd  to 
suppose  that  grown  people  would  not  respond  to  op- 
5  portunities  for  education  and  social  life.  Our  en¬ 
thusiastic  kindergartner  herself  demonstrated  this  with 
an  old  woman  of  ninety,  who,  because  she  was  left  alone 
all  day  while  her  daughter  cooked  in  a  restaurant,  had 
formed  such  a  persistent  habit  of  picking  the  plaster  off 
othe  walls  that  one  landlord  after  another  refused  to 
have  her  for  a  tenant.  It  required  but  a  few  weeks’ 
time  to  teach  her  to  make  large  paper  chains,  and 
gradually  she  was  content  to  do  it  all  day  long,  and  in 
the  end  took  quite  as  much  pleasure  in  adorning  the 
5  walls  as  she  had  formerly  taken  in  demolishing  them. 
Fortunately  the  landlord  had  never  heard  the  aesthetic 
principle  that  the  exposure  of  basic  construction  is  more 
desirable  than  gaudy  decoration.  In  course  of  time  it 
was  discovered  that  the  old  woman  could  speak  Gaelic,0 
o  and  when  one  or  two  grave  professors  came  to  see  her, 
the  neighborhood  was  filled  with  pride  that  such  a 
wonder  lived  in  their  midst.  To  mitigate  life  for  a 
woman  of  ninety  was  an  unfailing  refutation  of  the 
statement  that  the  Settlement  was  designed  for  the 
s  young. 

On  our  first  New  Year’s  Day  at  Hull-House  we  in¬ 
vited  the  older  people  in  the  vicinity,  sending  a  carriage 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


99 

for  the  most  feeble  and  announcing  to  all  of  them  that 
we  were  going  to  organize  an  Old  Settlers’  Party. 

Every  New  Year’s  Day  since,  older  people  in  varying 
numbers  have  come  together  at  Hull-House  to  relate 
early  hardships,  and  to  take  for  the  moment  the  place  5 
in  the  community  to  which  their  pioneer  life  entitles 
them.  Many  people  who  were  formerly  residents  of  the 
vicinity,  but  whom  prosperity  has  carried  into  more 
desirable  neighborhoods,  come  back  to  these  meetings 
and  often  confess  to  each  other  that  they  have  never  10 
since  found  such  kindness  as  in  early  Chicago  when  all 
its  citizens  came  together  in  mutual  enterprises.  Many 
of  these  pioneers,  so  like  the  men  and  women  of  my 
earliest  childhood  that  I  always  felt  comforted  by  their 
presence  in  the  house,  were  very  much  opposed  to  1 5 
“foreigners,”  whom  they  held  responsible  for  a  de¬ 
preciation  of  property  and  a  general  lowering  of  the 
tone  of  the  neighborhood.  Sometimes  we  had  a  chance 
for  championship;  I  recall  one  old  man,  fiercely  Ameri¬ 
can,  who  had  reproached  me  because  we  had  so  many  20 
“foreign  views”  on  our  walls,  to  whom  I  endeavored  to 
set  forth  our  hope  that  the  pictures  might  afford  a 
familiar  island  to  the  immigrants  in  a  sea  of  new  and 
strange  impressions.  The  old  settler  guest,  taken  off  his 
guard,  replied,  “I  see;  they  feel  as  we  did  when  we  saw  25 
a  Yankee  notion  from  down  East,”  —  thereby  formu¬ 
lating  the  dim  kinship  between  the  pioneer  and  the 


ioo  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


immigrant,  both  “  buffeting  the  waves  of  a  new  develop¬ 
ment.”  The  older  settlers  as  well  as  their  children 
throughout  the  years  have  given  genuine  help  to  our 
various  enterprises  for  neighborhood  improvement,  and 
5  from  their  own  memories  of  earlier  hardships  have 
made  many  shrewd  suggestions  for  alleviating  the 
difficulties  of  that  first  sharp  struggle  with  untoward 
conditions. 

» 

In  those  early  days  we  were  often  asked  why  we  had 

1  o  come  to  live  on  Halsted  Street  when  we  could  afford  to 

live  somewhere  else.  I  remember  one  man  who  used  to 
shake  his  head  and  say  it  was  “the  strangest  thing  he 
had  met  in  his  experience,”  hut  who  was  finally  con¬ 
vinced  that  it  was  “not  strange  but  natural.”  In  time 
1 5  it  came  to  seem  natural  to  all  of  us  that  the  Settlement 
should  be  there.  If  it  is  natural  to  feed  the  hungry  and 
care  for  the  sick,  it  is  certainly  natural  to  give  pleasure 
to  the  young,  comfort  to  the  aged,  and  to  minister  to 
the  deep-seated  craving  for  social  intercourse  that  all 
2 omen  feel.  Whoever  does  it  is  rewarded  by  something 
which,  if  not  gratitude,  is  at  least  spontaneous  and  vital 
and  lacks  that  irksome  sense  of  obligation  with  which  a 
substantial  benefit  is  too  often  acknowledged. 

In  addition  to  the  neighbors  who  responded  to  the 

2  s  receptions  and  classes,  we  found  those  who  were  too 

battered  and  oppressed  to  care  for  them.  To  these, 
however,  was  left  that  susceptibility  to  the  bare  offices 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


IOI 


of  humanity  which  raises  such  offices  into  a  bond  of 
fellowship. 

From  the  first  it  seemed  understood  that  we  were 
ready  to  perform  the  humblest  neighborhood  services. 
We  were  asked  to  wash  the  new-born  babies,  and  to  5 
prepare  the  dead  for  burial,  to  nurse  the  sick,  and  to 
“mind  the  children.” 

Occasionally  these  neighborly  offices  unexpectedly 
uncovered  ugly  human  traits.  For  six  weeks  after  an 
operation  we  kept  in  one  of  our  three  bedrooms  a  forlorn  1  o 
little  baby  who,  because  he  was  born  with  a  cleft  palate, 
was  most  unwelcome  even  to  his  mother,  and  we  were 
horrified  when  he  died  of  neglect  a  week  after  he  was 
returned  to  his  home;  a  little  Italian  bride  of  fifteen 
sought  shelter  with  us  one  November  evening,  to  escape  1 5 
her  husband  who  had  beaten  her  every  night  for  a  week 
when  he  returned  home  from  work,  because  she  had  lost 
her  wedding  ring;  two  of  us  officiated  quite  alone  at  the 
birth  of  an  illegitimate  child  because  the  doctor  was 
late  in  arriving,  and  none  of  the  honest  Irish  matrons  20 
would  “touch  the  likes  of  her”;  we  ministered  at  the 
deathbed  of  a  young  man,  who  during  a  long  illness  of 
tuberculosis  had  received  so  many  bottles  of  whisky 
through  the  mistaken  kindness  of  his  friends,  that  the 
cumulative  effect  produced  wild  periods  of  exultation,  25 
in  one  of  which  he  died. 

We  were  also  early  impressed  with  the  curious  isola- 


io2  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


tion  of  many  of  the  immigrants;  an  Italian  woman  once 
expressed  her  pleasure  in  the  red  roses  that  she  saw  at 
one  of  our  receptions  in  surprise  that  they  had  been 
“brought  so  fresh  all  the  way  from  Italy. ”  She  would 
snot  believe  for  an  instant  that  they  had  been  grown  in 
America.  She  said  that  she  had  lived  in  Chicago  for  six 
years  and  had  never  seen  any  roses,  whereas  in  Italy  she 
had  seen  them  every  summer  in  great  profusion.  During 
all  that  time,  of  course,  the  woman  had  lived  within  ten 
o  blocks  of  a  florist’s  window;  she  had  not  been  more  than 
a  five-cent  car  ride  away  from  the  public  parks;  but  she 
had  never  dreamed  of  faring  forth  for  herself,  and  no 
one  had  taken  her.  Her  conception  of  America  had  been 
the  untidy  street  in  which  she  lived  and  had  made  her 
s  long  struggle  to  adapt  herself  to  American  ways. 

But  in  spite  of  some  untoward  experiences,  we  were 
constantly  impressed  with  the  uniform  kindness  and 
courtesy  we  received.  Perhaps  these  first  days  laid  the 
simple  human  foundations  which  are  certainly  essential 
ofor  continuous  living  among  the  poor:  first,  genuine 
preference  for  residence  in  an  industrial  quarter  to  any 
other  part  of  the  city,  because  it  is  interesting  and 
makes  the  human  appeal;  and  second,  the  conviction, 
in  the  words  of  Canon  Barnett,0  that  the  things  which 
5  make  men  alike  are  finer  and  better  than  the  things 
that  keep  them  apart,  and  that  these  basic  likenesses,  ii 
they  are  properly  accentuated,  easily  transcend  the  less 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


05 

essential  differences  of  race,  language,  creed,  and 
tradition. 

Perhaps  even  in  those  first  days  we  made  a  beginning 
toward  that  object  which  was  afterwards  stated  in  our 
charter:  “To  provide  a  center  for  a  higher  civic  and  5 
social  life;  to  institute  and  maintain  educational  and 
philanthropic  enterprises,  and  to  investigate  and  im¬ 
prove  the  conditions  in  the  industrial  districts  of 
Chicago.” 


CHAPTER  VI 

Subjective  Necessity  for  Social  Settlements 

The  Ethical  Culture  Societies  held  a  summer  school 
at  Plymouth,  Massachusetts,  in  1892,  to  which  they 
invited  several  people  representing  the  then  new  Settle¬ 
ment  movement,  that  they  might  discuss  with  others 
s  the  general  theme  of  Philanthropy  and  Social  Progress. 
I  venture  to  produce  here  parts  of  a  lecture  I  de¬ 
livered  in  Plymouth,  both  because  I  have  found  it  im¬ 
possible  to  formulate  with  the  same  freshness  those 
early  motives  and  strivings,  and  because,  when  pub- 
10  lished  with  other  papers  given  that  summer,  it  was  re¬ 
ceived  by  the  Settlement  people  themselves  as  a  satis¬ 
factory  statement. 

I  remember  one  golden  summer  afternoon  during  the 
sessions  of  the  summer  school  that  several  of  us  met  on 
1 5  the  shores  of  a  pond  in  a  pine  wood  a  few  miles  from 
Plymouth,  to  discuss  our  new  movement.  The  natural 
leader  of  the  group  was  Robert  A.  Woods.0  He  had 
recently  returned  from  a  residence  in  Toynbee  Hall, 
London,  to  open  Andover  House  in  Boston,  and  had 
20 just  issued  a  book,  “English  Social  Movements,”  in 
which  he  had  gathered  together  and  focused  the  many 
forms  of  social  endeavor  preceding  and  contemporane- 


104 


SOCIAL  SETTLEMENTS 


105 

ous  with  the  English  Settlements.  There  were  Miss 
Vida  D.  Scudder0  and  Miss  Helena  Dudley0  from  the 
College  Settlement  Association,  Miss  Julia  C.  Lathrop 
and  myself  from  Hull-House.  Some  of  us  had  numbered 
our  years  as  far  as  thirty,  and  we  all  carefully  avoided 
the  extravagance  of  statement  which  characterizes 
youth,  and  yet  I  doubt  if  anywhere  on  the  continent 
that  summer  could  have  been  found  a  group  of  people 
more  genuinely  interested  in  social  development  or  more 
sincerely  convinced  that  they  had  found  a  clew  by  which 
the  conditions  in  crowded  cities  might  be  understood 
and  the  agencies  for  social  betterment  developed. 

We  were  all  careful  to  avoid  saying  that  we  had  found 
a  “life  work,”  perhaps  with  an  instinctive  dread  of  ex¬ 
pending  all  our  energy  in  vows  of  constancy,  as  so  often 
happens;  and  yet  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  all  of  the 
people  whom  I  have  recalled  as  the  enthusiasts  at  that 
little  conference,  have  remained  attached  to  Settlements 
in  actual  residence  for  longer  or  shorter  periods  each 
year  during  the  eighteen  years  which  have  elapsed 
since  then,  although  they  have  also  been  closely  identi¬ 
fied  as  publicists  or  governmental  officials  with  move¬ 
ments  outside.  It  is  as  if  they  had  discovered  that  the 
Settlement  was  too  valuable  as  a  method  as  a  way  of 
approach  to  the  social  question  to  be  abandoned,  al¬ 
though  they  had  long  since  discovered  that  it  was  not  a 
“social  movement”  in  itself.  This,  however,  is  antici¬ 
pating  the  future,  whereas  the  following  paper  on  “The 


io6  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


Subjective  Necessity  for  Social  Settlements”  should 
have  a  chance  to  speak  for  itself.  It  is  perhaps  too  late 
in  the  day  to  express  regret  for  its  stilted  title. 

This  paper  is  an  attempt  to  analyze  the  motives  which  underlie  a 
5  movement  based,  not  only  upon  conviction,  but  upon  genuine  emo¬ 
tion,  wherever  educated  young  people  are  seeking  an  outlet  for  that 
sentiment  of  universal  brotherhood,  which  the  best  spirit  of  our  times 
is  forcing  from  an  emotion  into  a  motive.  These  young  people  accom¬ 
plish  little  toward  the  solution  of  this  social  problem,  and  bear  the 

i  o  brunt  of  being  cultivated  into  unnourished,  oversensitive  lives.  They 
have  been  shut  off  from  the  common  labor  by  which  they  live  which 
is  a  great  source  of  moral  and  physical  health.  They  feel  a  fatal  want 
of  harmony  between  their  theory  and  their  lives,  a  lack  of  coordination 
between  thought  and  action.  I  think  it  is  hard  for  us  to  realize  how 

1  s  seriously  many  of  them  are  taking  to  the  notion  of  human  brother¬ 

hood,  how  eagerly  they  long  to  give  tangible  expression  to  the 
democratic  ideal.  These  young  men  and  women,  longing  to  socialize 
their  democracy,  are  animated  by  certain  hopes  which  may  be  thus 
loosely  formulated;  that  if  in  a  democratic  country  nothing  can  be 

2  o  permanently  achieved  save  through  the  masses  of  the  people,  it  will 

be  impossible  to  establish  a  higher  political  life  than  the  people  them¬ 
selves  crave;  that  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  notion  of  a  higher  civic 
life  can  be  fostered  save  through  common  intercourse;  that  the  bless¬ 
ings  which  we  associate  with  a  life  of  refinement  and  cultivation  can 

2  5  be  made  universal  and  must  be  made  universal  if  they  are  to  be 

permanent;  that  the  good  we  secure  for  ourselves  is  precarious  and 
uncertain,  is  floating  in  mid-air,  until  it  is  secured  for  all  of  us  and 
incorporated  into  our  common  life.  It  is  easier  to  state  these  hopes 
than  to  formulate  the  line  of  motives,  which  I  believe  to  constitute 

3  °  the  trend  of  the  subjective  pressure  toward  the  Settlement.  There  is 

something  primordial  about  these  motives,  but  I  am  perhaps  over¬ 
bold  in  designating  them  as  a  great  desire  to  share  the  race  life.  We 
all  bear  traces  of  the  starvation  struggle  which  for  so  long  made  up 


SOCIAL  SETTLEMENTS 

the  life  of  the  race.  Our  very  organism  holds  memories  and  glimpses 
of  that  long  life  of  our  ancestors  which  still  goes  on  among  so  many  of 
our  contemporaries.  Nothing  so  deadens  the  sympathies  and  shrivels 
the  power  of  enjoyment,  as  the  persistent  keeping  away  from  the  great 
opportunities  for  helpfulness  and  a  continual  ignoring  of  the  starva-  5 
tion  struggle  which  makes  up  the  life  of  at  least  half  the  race.  To 
shut  one’s  self  away  from  that  half  of  the  race  life  is  to  shut  one’s  self 
away  from  the  most  vital  part  of  it;  it  is  to  live  out  but  half  the 
humanity  to  which  we  have  been  born  heir  and  to  use  but  half  our 
faculties.  We  have  all  had  longings  for  a  fuller  life  which  should  in-  i  o 
elude  the  use  of  these  faculties.  These  longings  are  the  physical 
complement  of  the  “Intimations  of  Immortality,”  on  which  no  ode 
has  yet  been  written.  To  portray  these  would  be  the  work  of  a  poet, 
and  it  is  hazardous  for  any  but  a  poet  to  attempt  it. 

You  may  remember  the  forlorn  feeling  which  occasionally  seizes  i  5 
you  when  you  arrive  early  in  the  morning  a  stranger  in  a  great  city: 
the  stream  of  laboring  people  goes  past  you  as  you  gaze  through  the 
plate-glass  window  of  your  hotel;  you  see  hard  working  men  lifting 
great  burdens;  you  hear  the  driving  and  jostling  of  huge  carts  and 
your  heart  sinks  with  a  sudden  sense  of  futility.  The  door  opens  20 
behind  you  and  you  turn  to  the  man  who  brings  you  in  your  breakfast 
with  a  quick  sense  of  human  fellowship.  You  find  yourself  praying 
that  you  may  never  lose  your  hold  on  it  all.  A  more  poetic  prayer 
would  be  that  the  great  mother  breasts  of  our  common  humanity, 
with  its  labor  and  suffering  and  its  homely  comforts,  may  never  be  2  5 
withheld  from  you.  You  turn  helplessly  to  the  waiter  and  feel  that  it 
would  be  almost  grotesque  to  claim  from  him  the  sympathy  you  crave 
because  civilization  has  placed  you  apart,  but  you  resent  your  position 
with  a  sudden  sense  of  snobbery.  Literature  is  full  of  portrayals  of 
these  glimpses:  they  come  to  shipwrecked  men  on  rafts;  they  over-  30 
come  the  differences  of  an  incongruous  multitude  when  in  the  presence 
of  a  great  danger  or  w  hen  moved  by  a  common  enthusiasm.  They  are 
not,  however,  confined  to  such  moments,  and  if  wre  were  in  the  habit 
of  telline  them  to  each  other,  the  recital  w7ould  be  as  long  as  the  tales 


io8  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


of  children  are,  when  they  sit  down  on  the  green  grass  and  confide  to 
each  other  how  many  times  they  have  remembered  that  they  lived 
once  before.  If  these  childish  tales  are  the  stirring  of  inherited  im¬ 
pressions,  just  so  surely  is  the  other  the  striving  of  inherited  powers. 

5  “  It  is  true  that  there  is  nothing  after  disease,  indigence  and  a  sense 

of  guilt,  so  fatal  to  health  and  to  life  itself  as  the  want  of  a  proper 
outlet  for  active  faculties.”  I  have  seen  young  girls  suffer  and  grow 
sensibly  lowered  in  vitality  in  the  first  years  after  they  leave  school. 
In  our  attempt  then  to  give  a  girl  pleasure  and  freedom  from  care  we 
i  o  succeed,  for  the  most  part,  in  making  her  pitifully  miserable.  She 
finds  “life”  so  different  from  what  she  expected  it  to  be.  She  is 
besotted  with  innocent  little  ambitions,  and  does  not  understand  this 
apparent  waste  of  herself,  this  elaborate  preparation,  if  no  work  is 
provided  for  her.  There  is  a  heritage  of  noble  obligation  which  young 

1  s  people  accept  and  long  to  perpetuate.  The  desire  for  action,  the  wish 

to  right  wrong  and  alleviate  suffering  haunts  them  daily.  Society 
smiles  at  it  indulgently  instead  of  making  it  of  value  to  itself.  The 
wrong  to  them  begins  even  farther  back,  when  we  restrain  the  first 
childish  desires  for  “doing  good”  and  tell  them  that  they  must  wait 

2  o  until  they  are  older  and  better  fitted.  We  intimate  that  social  obliga¬ 

tion  begins  at  a  fixed  date,  forgetting  that  it  begins  with  birth  itself. 
We  treat  them  as  children  who,  with  strong-growing  limbs,  are 
allowed  to  use  their  legs  but  not  their  arms,  or  whose  legs  are  daily 
carefully  exercised  that  after  a  while  their  arms  may  be  put  to  high 
2  5  use.  We  do  this  in  spite  of  the  protest  of  the  best  educators,  Locke 
and  Pestalozzi.0  We  are  fortunate  in  the  meantime  if  their  unused 
members  do  not  weaken  and  disappear.  They  do  sometimes.  There 
are  a  few  girls  who,  by  the  time  they  are  “educated,”  forget  their  old 
childish  desires  to  help  the  world  and  to  play  with  poor  little  girls 
30  “who  haven’t  playthings.”  Parents  are  often  inconsistent:  they 
deliberately  expose  their  daughters  to  knowledge  of  the  distress  in 
the  world;  they  send  them  to  hear  missionary  addresses  on  famines 
in  India  and  China;  they  accompany  them  to  lectures  on  the  suffering 
in  Siberia;  they  agitate  together  over  the  forgotten  region  of  East 


SOCIAL  SETTLEMENTS 


109 


London.  In  addition  to  this,  from  babyhood  the  altruistic  tendencies 
of  these  daughters  are  persistently  cultivated.  They  are  taught  to 
be  self-forgetting  and  self-sacrificing,  to  consider  the  good  of  the 
whole  before  the  good  of  the  ego.  But  when  all  this  information  and 
culture  show  results,  when  the  daughter  comes  back  from  college  5 
and  begins  to  recognize  her  social  claim  to  the  “submerged  tenth,” 
and  to  evince  a  disposition  to  fulfill  it,  the  family  claim  is  strenuously 
asserted;  she  is  told  that  she  is  unjustified,  ill-advised  in  her  efforts. 

If  she  persists,  the  family  too  often  are  injured  and  unhappy  unless 
the  efforts  are  called  missionary  and  the  religious  zeal  of  the  family  1  o 
carries  them  over  their  sense  of  abuse.  When  this  zeal  does  not  exist, 
the  result  is  perplexing.  It  is  a  curious  violation  of  what  we  would 
fain  believe  a  fundamental  law  —  that  the  final  return  of  the  deed  is 
upon  the  head  of  the  doer.  The  deed  is  that  of  exclusiveness  and 
caution,  but  the  return,  instead  of  falling  upon  the  head  of  the  ex-  1  5 
elusive  and  cautious,  falls  upon  a  young  head  full  of  generous  and  un¬ 
selfish  plans.  The  girl  loses  something  vital  out  of  her  life  to  which  she 
is  entitled.  She  is  restricted  and  unhappy;  her  elders,  meanwhile,  are 
unconscious  of  the  situation  and  we  have  all  the  elements  of  a  tragedy. 

We  have  in  America  a  fast-growing  number  of  cultivated  young  20 
people  who  have  no  recognized  outlet  for  their  active  faculties.  They 
hear  constantly  of  the  great  social  maladjustment,  but  no  way  is 
provided  for  them  to  change  it,  and  their  uselessness  hangs  about  them 
heavily.  Huxley  declares  that  the  sense  of  uselessness  is  the  severest 
shock  which  the  human  system  can  sustain,  and  that  if  persistently  2  5 
sustained,  it  results  in  atrophy  of  function.  These  young  people  have 
had  advantages  of  college,  of  European  travel,  and  of  economic 
study,  but  they  are  sustaining  this  shock  of  inaction.  They  have  pet 
phrases,  and  they  tell  you  that  the  things  that  make  us  all  alike  are 
stronger  than  the  things  that  make  us  different.  They  say  that  all  30 
men  are  united  by  needs  and  sympathies  far  more  permanent  and 
radical  than  anything  that  temporarily  divides  them  and  sets  them 
in  opposition  to  each  other.  If  they  affect  art,  they  say  that  the  decay 
in  artistic  expression  is  due  to  the  decay  in  ethics,  that  art  when  shut 


no  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


away  from  the  human  interests  and  from  the  great  mass  of  humanity 
is  self-destructive.  They  tell  their  elders  with  all  the  bitterness  of 
youth  that  if  they  expect  success  from  them  in  business  or  politics  or 
in  whatever  lines  their  ambition  for  them  has  run,  they  must  let  them 
5  consult  all  of  humanity;  that  they  must  let  them  find  out  what  the 
people  want  and  how  they  want  it.  It  is  only  the  stronger  young 
people,  however,  who  formulate  this.  Many  of  them  dissipate  their 
energies  in  so-called  enjoyment.  Others  not  content  with  that,  go  on 
studying  and  go  back  to  college  for  their  second  degrees;  not  that 
i  o  they  are  especially  fond  of  study,  but  because  they  want  something 
definite  to  do,  and  their  powers  have  been  trained  in  the  direction  of 
mental  accumulation.  Many  are  buried  beneath  this  mental  accumu¬ 
lation  with  lowered  vitality  and  discontent.  Walter  Besant0  says 
they  have  had  the  vision  that  Peter  had  when  he  saw  the  great  sheet 

1  5  let  down  from  heaven,  wherein  was  neither  clean  nor  unclean.  He 

calls  it  the  sense  of  humanity.  It  is  not  philanthropy  nor  benevolence, 
but  a  thing  fuller  and  wider  than  either  of  these. 

This  young  life,  so  sincere  in  its  emotion  and  good  phrases  and  yet 
So  undirected,  seems  to  me  as  pitiful  as  the  other  great  mass  of  desti- 
2otute  lives.  One  is  supplementary  to  the  other,  and  some  method  of 
communication  can  surely  be  devised.  Mr.  Barnett,  who  urged  the 
first  Settlement,  —  Toynbee  Hall,  in  East  London,  —  recognized  this 
need  of  outlet  for  the  young  men  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and 
hoped  that  the  Settlement  would  supply  the  communication.  It  is 

2  5  easy  to  see  why  the  Settlement  movement  originated  in  England, 

where  the  years  of  education  are  more  constrained  and  definite  than 
they  are  here,  where  class  distinctions  are  more  rigid.  The  necessity 
of  it  was  greater  there,  but  we  are  fast  feeling  the  pressure  of  the  need 
and  meeting  the  necessity  for  Settlements  in  America.  Our  young 
30  people  feel  nervously  the  need  of  putting  theory  into  action,  and 
respond  quickly  to  the  Settlement  form  of  activity. 

Other  motives  which  I  believe  make  toward  the  Settlement  are  the 
result  of  a  certain  renaissance  going  forward  in  Christianity.  I  he 
impulse  to  share  the  lives  of  the  poor,  the  desire  to  make  social  service, 


SOCIAL  SETTLEMENTS 


hi 


irrespective  of  propaganda,  express  the  spirit  of  Christ,  is  as  old  as 
Christianity  itself.  We  have  no  proof  from  the  records  themselves 
that  the  early  Roman  Christians,  who  strained  their  simple  art  to  the 
point  of  grotesqueness  in  their  eagerness  to  record  a  “good  news”  on 
the  walls  of  the  catacombs,  considered  this  good  news  a  religion.  5 
Jesus  had  no  set  of  truths  labeled  Religious.  On  the  contrary,  his 
doctrine  wTas  that  all  truth  is  one,  that  the  appropriation  of  it  is 
freedom.  His  teaching  had  no  dogma  to  mark  it  off  from  truth  and 
action  in  general.  He  himself  called  it  a  revelation  —  a  life.  These 
early  Roman  Christians  received  the  Gospel  message,  a  command  1  o 
to  love  all  men,  with  a  certain  joyous  simplicity.  The  image  of  the 
Good  Shepherd  is  blithe  and  gay  beyond  the  gentlest  shepherd  of 
Greek  mythology;  the  hart  no  longer  pants,  but  rushes  to  the  water 
brooks.  The  Christians  looked  for  the  continuous  revelation,  but 
believed  what  Jesus  said,  that  this  revelation,  to  be  retained  and  made  1  5 
manifest,  must  be  put  into  terms  of  action;  that  action  is  the  only 
medium  man  has  for  receiving  and  appropriating  truth;  that  the 
doctrine  must  be  known  through  the  will. 

That  Christianity  has  to  be  revealed  and  embodied  in  the  line  of 
social  progress  is  a  corollary  to  the  simple  proposition,  that  man’s  2  o 
action  is  found  in  his  social  relationships  in  the  way  in  which  he  con¬ 
nects  with  his  fellows;  that  his  motives  for  action  are  the  zeal  and 
affection  with  which  he  regards  his  fellows.  By  this  simple  process 
was  created  a  deep  enthusiasm  for  humanity,  which  regarded  man  as 
at  once  the  organ  and  the  object  of  revelation;  and  by  this  process  25 
came  about  the  wronderful  fellowship,  the  true  democracy  of  the  early 
Church,  that  so  captivates  the  imagination.  The  early  Christians 
were  preeminently  nonresistant.  They  believed  in  love  as  a  cosmic 
force.  There  was  no  iconoclasm  during  the  minor  peace  of  the  Church. 
They  did  not  yet  denounce  nor  tear  down  temples,  nor  preach  the  30 
end  of  the  world.  They  grew  to  a  mighty  number,  but  it  never  oc¬ 
curred  to  them,  either  in  their  weakness  or  in  their  strength,  to  regard 
other  men  for  an  instant  as  their  foes  or  as  aliens.  The  spectacle  of 
the  Christians  loving  all  men  was  the  most  astounding  Rome  had  ever 


1 12  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


seen.  They  were  eager  to  sacrifice  themselves  for  the  weak,  for  chil¬ 
dren,  and  for  the  aged;  they  identified  themselves  with  slaves  and  did 
not  avoid  the  plague;  they  longed  to  share  the  common  lot  that  they 
might  receive  the  constant  revelation.  It  was  a  new  treasure  which 
5  the  early  Christians  added  to  the  sum  of  all  treasures,  a  joy  hitherto 
unknown  in  the  world  —  the  joy  of  finding  the  Christ  which  lieth  in 
each  man,  but  which  no  man  can  unfold  save  in  fellowship.  A  happi¬ 
ness  ranging  from  the  heroic  to  the  pastoral  enveloped  them.  They 
were  to  possess  a  revelation  as  long  as  life  had  new  meaning  to  un¬ 
ci  fold,  new  action  to  propose. 

I  believe  that  there  is  a  distinct  turning  among  many  young  men 
and  women  toward  this  simple  acceptance  of  Christ’s  message.  They 
resent  the  assumption  that  Christianity  is  a  set  of  ideas  which  belong 
to  the  religious  consciousness,  whatever  that  may  be.  They  insist 
5  that  it  cannot  be  proclaimed  and  instituted  apart  from  the  social  life 
of  the  community  and  that  it  must  seek  a  simple  and  natural  ex¬ 
pression  in  the  social  organism  itself.  The  Settlement  movement  is 
only  one  manifestation  of  that  wider  humanitarian  movement  which 
throughout  Christendom,  but  preeminently  in  England,  is  endeavor- 
oing  to  embody  itself,  not  in  a  sect,  but  in  society  itself. 

I  believe  that  this  turning,  this  renaissance  of  the  early  Christian 
humanitarianism,  is  going  on  in  America,  in  Chicago,  if  you  please, 
without  leaders  who  write  or  philosophize,  without  much  speaking, 
but  with  a  bent  to  express  in  social  service  and  in  terms  of  action  the 
5  spirit  of  Christ.  Certain  it  is  that  spiritual  force  is  found  in  the  Settle¬ 
ment  movement,  and  it  is  also  true  that  this  force  must  be  evoked  and 
must  be  called  into  play  before  the  success  of  any  Settlement  is  as¬ 
sured.  There  must  be  tbe  overmastering  belief  that  all  that  is  noblest 
in  life  is  common  to  men  as  men,  in  order  to  accentuate  the  likenesses 
o  and  ignore  the  differences  which  are  found  among  the  people  whom 
the  Settlement  constantly  brings  into  juxtaposition.  It  may  be  true, 
as  the  Positivists  insist,  that  the  very  religious  fervor  of  man  can  be 
turned  into  love  for  his  race,  and  his  desire  for  a  future  life  into  con¬ 
tent  to  live  in  the  echo  of  his  deeds;  Paul’s  formula  of  seeking  for  the 


SOCIAL  SETTLEMENTS 


1 13 

Christ  which  lieth  in  each  man  and  founding  our  likenesses  on  him, 
seems  a  simpler  formula  to  many  of  us. 

In  a  thousand  voices  singing  the  Hallelujah  Chorus  in  Handel’s 
“Messiah,”  it  is  possible  to  distinguish  the  leading  voices,  but  the 
differences  of  training  and  cultivation  between  them  and  the  voices  5 
of  the  chorus,  are  lost  in  the  unity  of  purpose  and  in  the  fact  that  they 
are  all  human  voices  lifted  by  a  high  motive.  This  is  a  weak  illustra¬ 
tion  of  what  a  Settlement  attempts  to  do.  It  aims,  in  a  measure,  to 
develop  whatever  of  social  life  its  neighborhood  may  afford,  to  focus 
and  give  form  to  that  life,  to  bring  to  bear  upon  it  the  results  of  cul-  1  o 
tivation  and  training;  but  it  receives  in  exchange  for  the  music  of 
isolated  voices  the  volume  and  strength  of  the  chorus.  It  is  quite  im¬ 
possible  for  me  to  say  in  what  proportion  or  degree  the  subjective- 
necessity  which  led  to  the  opening  of  Hull-House  combined  the  three 
trends:  first,  the  desire  to  interpret  democracy  in  social  terms;  15 
secondly,  the  impulse  beating  at  the  very  source  of  our  lives,  urging 
us  to  aid  in  the  race  progress;  and,  thirdly,  the  Christian  movement 
toward  humanitarianism.  It  is  difficult  to  analyze  a  living  thing;  the 
analysis  is  at  best  imperfect.  Many  more  motives  may  blend  with 
the  three  trends;  possibly  the  desire  for  a  new  form  of  social  success  20 
due  to  the  nicety  of  imagination,  which  refuses  worldly  pleasures  un¬ 
mixed  with  the  joys  of  self-sacrifice;  possibly  a  love  of  approbation, 
so  vast  that  it  is  not  content  with  the  treble  clapping  of  delicate  hands, 
but  wishes  also  to  hear  the  bass  notes  from  toughened  palms,  may 
mingle  with  these.  2  5 

The  Settlement,  then,  is  an  experimental  effort  to  aid  in  the  solution 
of  the  social  and  industrial  problems  which  are  engendered  by  the 
modern  conditions  of  life  in  a  great  city.  It  insists  that  these  problems 
are  not  confined  to  any  one  portion  of  a  city.  It  is  an  attempt  to 
relieve,  at  the  same  time,  the  overaccumulation  at  one  end  of  society  3  o 
and  the  destitution  at  the  other;  but  it  assumes  that  this  overaccumu¬ 
lation  and  destitution  is  most  sorely  felt  in  the  things  that  pertain  to 
social  and  educational  advantages.  From  its  very  nature  it  can  stand 
for  no  political  or  social  propaganda.  It  must,  in  a  sense,  give  the 


1 14  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

warm  welcome  of  an  inn  to  all  such  propaganda,  if  perchance  one  of 
them  be  found  an  angel.  The  one  thing  to  be  dreaded  in  the  Settle¬ 
ment  is  that  it  lose  its  flexibility,  its  power  of  quick  adaptation,  its 
readiness  to  change  its  methods  as  its  environment  may  demand.  It 
5  must  be  open  to  conviction  and  must  have  a  deep  and  abiding  sense 
of  tolerance.  It  must  be  hospitable  and  ready  for  experiment.  It 
should  demand  from  its  residents  a  scientific  patience  in  the  accumu¬ 
lation  of  facts  and  the  steady  holding  of  their  sympathies  as  one  of 
the  best  instruments  for  that  accumulation.  It  must  be  grounded  in 

i  o  a  philosophy  whose  foundation  is  on  the  solidarity  of  the  human  race, 
a  philosophy  which  will  not  waver  when  the  race  happens  to  be  repre¬ 
sented  by  a  drunken  woman  or  an  idiot  boy.  Its  residents  must  be 
emptied  of  all  conceit  of  opinion  and  all  self-assertion,  and  ready  to 
arouse  and  interpret  the  public  opinion  of  their  neighborhood.  They 

1  5  must  be  content  to  live  quietly  side  by  side  with  their  neighbors,  until 

they  grow  into  a  sense  of  relationship  and  mutual  interests.  1  heir 
neighbors  are  held  apart  by  differences  of  race  and  language  which 
the  residents  can  more  easily  overcome.  They  are  bound  to  see  the 
needs  of  their  neighborhood  as  a  whole,  to  furnish  data  for  legislation, 

2  o  and  to  use  their  influence  to  secure  it.  In  short,  residents  are  pledged 

to  devote  themselves  to  the  duties  of  good  citizenship  and  to  the 
arousing  of  the  social  energies  which  too  largely  lie  dormant  in  every 
neighborhood  given  over  to  industrialism.  They  are  bound  to  regard 
the  entire  life  of  their  city  as  organic,  to  make  an  effort  to  unify  it, 

2  5  and  to  protest  against  its  over-differentiation. 

It  is  always  easy  to  make  all  philosophy  point  one  particular  moral 
and  all  history  adorn  one  particular  tale;  but  I  may  be  forgiven  the 
reminder  that  the  best  speculative  philosophy  sets  forth  the  solidarity 
of  the  human  race;  that  the  highest  moralists  have  taught  that  with- 

3  o  out  the  advance  and  improvement  of  the  whole,  no  man  can  hope  for 

any  lasting  improvement  in  his  own  moral  or  material  individual 
condition;  and  that  the  subjective  necessity  for  Social  Settlements  is 
therefore  identical  with  that  necessity,  which  urges  us  on  toward 
social  and  individual  salvation. 


. 


V 


CHAPTER  VII 

Some  Early  Undertakings  at  Hull-House 

If  the  early  American  Settlements  stood  for  a  more 
exigent  standard  in  philanthropic  activities,  insisting 
that  each  new  undertaking  should  be  preceded  by  care¬ 
fully  ascertained  facts,  then  certainly  Hull-House  held 
to  this  standard  in  the  opening  of  our  new  coffee-house  5 
first  started  as  a  public  kitchen.  An  investigation  of 
the  sweatshops  had  disclosed  the  fact  that  sewing 
women  during  the  busy  season  paid  little  attention  to 
the  feeding  of  their  families,  for  it  was  only  by  working 
steadily  through  the  long  day  that  the  scanty  pay  of  10 
five,  seven,  or  nine  cents  for  finishing  a  dozen  pairs  of 
trousers  could  be  made  into  a  day’s  wage;  and  they 
bought  from  the  nearest  grocery  the  canned  goods  that 
could  be  most  quickly  heated,  or  gave  a  few  pennies  to 
the  children  with  which  they  might  secure  a  lunch  from  1 5 
a  neighboring  candy  shop. 

One  of  the  residents  made  an  investigation,  at  the 
instance  of  the  United  States  Department  of  Agricul¬ 
ture,  into  the  food  values  of  the  dietaries  of  the  various 
immigrants,  and  this  was  followed  by  an  investigation  20 
made  by  another  resident,  for  the  United  States  De¬ 
partment  of  Labor,  into  the  foods  of  the  Italian  colony, 

115 


n6  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


on  the  supposition  that  the  constant  use  of  imported 
products  bore  a  distinct  relation  to  the  cost  of  living.  I 
recall  an  Italian  who,  coming  into  Hull-House  one  day 
as  we  were  sitting  at  the  dinner  table,  expressed  great 
5  surprise  that  Americans  ate  a  variety  of  food,  because 
he  believed  that  they  partook  only  of  potatoes  and  beer. 
A  little  inquiry  showed  that  this  conclusion  was  drawn 
from  the  fact  that  he  lived  next  to  an  Irish  saloon  and 
had  never  seen  anything  but  potatoes  going  in  and  beer 
o  coming  out. 

At  that  time  the  New  England  kitchen  was  com¬ 
paratively  new  in  Boston,  and  Mrs.  Richards,  who  was 
largely  responsible  for  its  foundation,  hoped  that  cheap¬ 
er  cuts  of  meat  and  simpler  vegetables,  if  they  were 
5  subjected  to  slow  and  thorough  processes  of  cooking, 
might  be  made  attractive  and  their  nutritive  value 
secured  for  the  people  who  so  sadly  needed  more 
nutritious  food.  It  was  felt  that  this  could  be  best 
accomplished  in  public  kitchens,  where  the  advantage 
oof  scientific  training  and  careful  supervision  could  be 
secured.  One  of  the  residents  went  to  Boston  for  a 
training  under  Mrs.  Richards,  and  when  the  Hull-House 
kitchen  was  fitted  under  her  guidance  and  direction, 
our  hopes  ran  high  for  some  modification  of  the  food 
5  of  the  neighborhood.  We  did  not  reckon,  however, 
with  the  wide  diversity  in  nationality  and  inherited 
tastes,  and  while  we  sold  a  certain  amount  of  the  care¬ 
fully  prepared  soups  and  stews  in  the  neighboring 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS  117 

factories  —  a  sale  which  has  steadily  increased  through¬ 
out  the  years  —  and  were  also  patronized  by  a  few 
households,  perhaps  the  neighborhood  estimate  was 
best  summed  up  by  the  woman  who  frankly  confessed 
that  the  food  was  certainly  nutritious,  but  that  she  5 
didn’t  like  to  eat  what  was  nutritious,  that  she  liked  to 
eat  “what  she’d  ruther. ” 

If  the  dietetics  were  appreciated  but  slowly,  the 
social  value  of  the  coffee-house  and  the  gymnasium, 
which  were  in  the  same  building,  were  quickly  demon-  1  o 
strated.  At  that  time  the  saloon  halls  were  the  only 
places  in  the  neighborhood  where  the  immigrant  could 
hold  his  social  gatherings,  and  where  he  could  celebrate 
such  innocent  and  legitimate  occasions  as  weddings  and 
christenings.  1 5 

These  halls  were  rented  very  cheaply  with  the  under¬ 
standing  that  various  sums  of  money  should  be  “passed 
across  the  bar,”  and  it  was  considered  a  mean  host  or 
guest  who  failed  to  live  up  to  this  implied  bargain.  The 
consequence  was  that  many  a  reputable  party  ended  20 
with  a  certain  amount  of  disorder,  due  solely  to  the  fact 
that  the  social  instinct  was  traded  upon  and  used  as  a 
basis  for  money  making  by  an  adroit  host.  From  the 
beginning  the  young  people’s  clubs  had  asked  for  danc¬ 
ing,  and  nothing  was  more  popular  than  the  increased  2  5 
space  for  parties  offered  by  the  gymnasium,  with  the 
chance  to  serve  refreshments  in  the  room  below.  We 
tried  experiments  with  every  known  “soft  drink,”  from 


1 1 8  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


those  extracted  from  an  expensive  soda  water  fountain 
to  slender  glasses  of  grape  juice,  but  so  far  as  drinks  were 
concerned  we  never  became  a  rival  to  the  saloon,  nor 
indeed  did  any  one  imagine  that  we  were  trying  to  do 
5  so.  I  remember  one  man  who  looked  about  the  cozy 
little  room  and  said,  “This  would  be  a  nice  place  to  sit 
in  all  day  if  one  could  only  have  beer.  ”  But  the  coffee¬ 
house  gradually  performed  a  mission  of  its  own  and 
became  something  of  a  social  center  to  the  neighborhood 

1  o  as  well  as  a  real  convenience.  Business  men  from  the 

adjacent  factories  and  school  teachers  from  the  nearest 
public  schools,  used  it  increasingly.  The  Hull-House 
students  and  club  members  supped  together  in  little 
groups  or  held  their  reunions  and  social  banquets,  as, 
1 5  to  a  certain  extent,  did  organizations  from  all  parts  of 
the  town.  The  experience  of  the  coffee-house  taught  us 
not  to  hold  to  preconceived  ideas  of  what  the  neighbor¬ 
hood  ought  to  have,  but  to  keep  ourselves  in  readiness 
to  modify  and  adapt  our  undertakings  as  we  discovered 
20  those  things  which  the  neighborhood  was  ready  to 
accept. 

Better  food  was  doubtless  needed,  but  more  attractive 
and  safer  places  for  social  gatherings  were  also  needed, 
and  the  neighborhood  was  ready  for  one  and  not  for  the 

2  5  other.  We  had  no  hint  then  in  Chicago  of  the  small 

parks  which  were  to  be  established  fifteen  years  later, 
containing  the  halls  for  dancing  and  their  own  restau¬ 
rants  in  buildings  where  the  natural  desire  of  the  young 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


119 

for  gayety  and  social  organization,  could  be  safely  in¬ 
dulged.  Yet  even  in  that  early  day  a  member  of  the 
Hull-House  Men’s  Club  who  had  been  appointed 
superintendent  of  Douglas  Park  had  secured  there  the 
first  public  swimming  pool,  and  his  fellow  club  members 
were  proud  of  the  achievement. 

There  was  in  the  earliest  undertakings  at  Hull-House 
a  touch  of  the  artist’s  enthusiasm  when  he  translates 
his  inner  vision  through  his  chosen  material  into  out¬ 
ward  form.  Keenly  conscious  of  the  social  confusion  all 
about  us  and  the  hard  economic  struggle,  we  at  times 
believed  that  the  very  struggle  itself  might  become  a 
source  of  strength.  The  devotion  of  the  mothers  to 
their  children,  the  dread  of  the  men  lest  they  fail  to 
provide  for  the  family  dependent  upon  their  daily 
exertions,  at  moments  seemed  to  us  the  secret  stores  of 
strength  from  which  society  is  fed,  the  invisible  array 
of  passion  and  feeling  which  are  the  surest  protectors 
of  the  world.  We  fatuously  hoped  that  we  might  pluck 
from  the  human  tragedy  itself  a  consciousness  of  a 
common  destiny  which  should  bring  its  own  healing, 
that  we  might  extract  from  life’s  very  misfortunes  a 
power  of  cooperation  which  should  be  effective  against 
them. 

Of  course  there  was  always  present  the  harrowing 
consciousness  of  the  difference  in  economic  condition 
between  ourselves  and  our  neighbors.  Even  if  we  had 
gone  to  live  in  the  most  wretched  tenement,  there 


il 


i2o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


would  have  always  been  an  essential  difference  between 
them  and  ourselves,  for  we  should  have  had  a  sense  of 
security  in  regard  to  illness  and  old  age  and  the  lack  of 
these  two  securities  are  the  specters  which  most  per- 
s  sistently  haunt  the  poor.  Could  we,  in  spite  of  this, 
make  their  individual  efforts  more  effective  through 
organization  and  possibly  complement  them  by  small 
efforts  of  our  own  ? 

Some  such  vague  hope  was  in  our  minds  when  we 
o  started  the  Hull-House  Cooperative  Coal  Association, 
which  led  a  vigorous  life  for  three  years,  and  developed 
a  large  membership  under  the  skillful  advice  of  its  one 
paid  officer,  an  English  workingman  who  had  had  ex¬ 
perience  in  cooperative  societies  at  “’ome.”  Some  of 
5  the  meetings  of  the  association,  in  which  people  met  to 
consider  together  their  basic  dependence  upon  fire  and 
warmth,  had  a  curious  challenge  of  life  about  them. 
Because  the  cooperators  knew  what  it  meant  to  bring 
forth  children  in  the  midst  of  privation  and  to  see  the 
otiny  creatures  struggle  for  life,  their  recitals  cut  a  cross 
section,  as  it  were,  in  that  world-old  effort  —  the 
“dying  to  live”  which  so  inevitably  triumphs  over 
poverty  and  suffering.  And  yet  their  very  familiarity 
with  hardship  may  have  been  responsible  for  that 
s  sentiment  which  traditionally  ruins  business,  for  a  vote 
of  the  cooperators  that  the  basket  buyers  be  given  one 
basket  free  out  of  every  six,  that  the  presentation  of  five 
purchase  tickets  should  entitle  the  holders  to  a  profit  in 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


1 21 


coal  instead  of  stock  ‘‘because  it  would  be  a  shame  to 
keep  them  waiting  for  the  dividend,”  was  always 
pointed  to  by  the  conservative  quarter-of-a-ton  buyers 
as  the  beginning  of  the  end.  At  any  rate,  at  the  close 
of  the  third  winter,  although  the  Association  occupied 
an  imposing  coal  yard  on  the  southeast  corner  of  the 
Hull-House  block  and  its  gross  receipts  were  between 
three  and  four  hundred  dollars  a  day,  it  became  evident 
that  the  concern  could  not  remain  solvent  if  it  con¬ 
tinued  its  philanthropic  policy,  and  the  experiment  was 
terminated  by  the  cooperators  taking  up  their  stock  in 
the  remaining  coal. 

Our  next  cooperative  experiment  was  much  more 
successful,  perhaps  because  it  was  much  more  sponta¬ 
neous. 

At  a  meeting  of  working  girls  held  at  Hull-House 
during  a  strike  in  a  large  shoe  factory,  the  discussions 
made  it  clear  that  the  strikers  who  had  been  most  easily 
frightened,  and  therefore  first  to  capitulate,  were 
naturally  those  girls  who  were  paying  board  and  were 
afraid  of  being  put  out  if  they  fell  too  far  behind.  After 
a  recital  of  a  case  of  peculiar  hardship  one  of  them  ex¬ 
claimed  :  “Wouldn’t  it  be  fine  if  we  had  a  boarding  club 
of  our  own,  and  then  we  could  stand  by  each  other  in  a 
time  like  this?”  After  that  events  moved  quickly.  We 
read  aloud  together  Beatrice  Potter’s  little  book  on 
“Cooperation,”  and  discussed  all  the  difficulties  and 
fascinations  of  such  an  undertaking,  and  on  the  first  of 


i22  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


May,  1891,  two  comfortable  apartments  near  Hull- 
House  were  rented  and  furnished.  The  Settlement  was 
responsible  for  the  furniture  and  paid  the  first  month’s 
rent,  but  beyond  that  the  members  managed  the  club 
5  themselves.  The  undertaking  “ marched,”  as  the 
French  say,  from  the  very  first,  and  always  on  its  own 
feet.  Although  there  were  difficulties,  none  of  them 
proved  insurmountable,  which  was  a  matter  for  great 
satisfaction  in  the  face  of  a  statement  made  by  the  head 
10  of  the  United  States  Department  of  Labor,  who,  on  a 
visit  to  the  club  when  it  was  but  twx>  years  old,  said  that 
his  department  had  investigated  many  cooperative 
undertakings,  and  that  none  founded  and  managed  by 
women  had  ever  succeeded.  At  the  end  of  the  third 

1  s  year  the  club  occupied  all  of  the  six  apartments  which 

the  original  building  contained,  and  numbered  fifty 
members. 

It  was  in  connection  with  our  efforts  to  secure  a 
building  for  the  Jane  Club,  that  wre  first  found  ourselves 
20  in  the  dilemma  between  the  needs  of  our  neighbors  and 
the  kind-hearted  response  upon  which  we  had  already 
come  to  rely  for  their  relief.  The  adapted  apartments 
in  which  the  Jane  Club  was  housed  were  inevitably  more 
or  less  uncomfortable,  and  we  felt  that  the  success  of 

2  s  the  club  justified  the  erection  of  a  building  for  its  sole 

use. 

Up  to  that  time,  our  history  had  been  as  the  minor 
peace  of  the  early  Church.  We  had  had  the  most  gener- 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


123 


ous  interpretation  of  our  efforts.  Of  course,  many 
people  were  indifferent  to  the  idea  of  the  Settlement; 
others  looked  on  with  tolerant  and  sometimes  cynical 
amusement  which  we  would  often  encounter  in  a  good 
story  related  at  our  expense;  but  all  this  was  remote  and 
unreal  to  us  and  we  were  sure  that  if  the  critics  could 
but  touch  “the  life  of  the  people,”  they  would  under¬ 
stand. 

The  situation  changed  markedly  after  the  Pullman 
strike,  and  our  efforts  to  secure  factory  legislation  later 
brought  upon  us  a  certain  amount  of  distrust  and 
suspicion;  until  then  we  had  been  considered  merely  a 
kindly  philanthropic  undertaking  whose  new  form  gave 
us  a  certain  idealistic  glamour.  But  sterner  tests  were 
coming  and  one  of  the  first  was  in  connection  with  the 
new  building  for  the  Jane  Club.  A  trustee  of  Hull- 
House  came  to  see  us  one  day  with  the  good  news  that  a 
friend  of  his  was  ready  to  give  twenty  thousand  dollars 
with  which  to  build  the  desired  new  clubhouse.  When, 
however,  he  divulged  the  name  of  his  generous  friend,  it 
proved  to  be  that  of  a  man  who  was  notorious  for  under¬ 
paying  the  girls  in  his  establishment  and  concerning 
whom  there  were  even  darker  stories.  It  seemed  clearly 
impossible  to  erect  a  clubhouse  for  working  girls  with 
such  money  and  we  at  once  said  that  we  must  decline 
the  offer.  The  trustee  of  Hull-House  was  put  in  the 
most  embarrassing  situation;  he  had,  of  course,  induced 
the  man  to  give  the  money  and  had  had  no  thought  but 


124  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  it  would  be  eagerly  received;  he  would  now  be 
obliged  to  return  with  the  astonishing,  not  to  say  in¬ 
sulting,  news  that  the  money  was  considered  unfit. 

In  the  long  discussion  which  followed,  it  gradually 
5  became  clear  to  all  of  us  that  such  a  refusal  could  be 
valuable  only  as  it  might  reveal  to  the  man  himself  and 
to  others,  public  opinion  in  regard  to  certain  methods 
of  money-making,  but  that  from  the  very  nature  of  the 
case  our  refusal  of  this  money  could  not  be  made  public 
o  because  a  representative  of  Hull-House  had  asked  for  it. 
However,  the  basic  fact  remained  that  we  could  not 
accept  the  money,  and  of  this  the  trustee  himself  was 
fully  convinced.  This  incident  occurred  during  a  period 
of  much  discussion  concerning  “tainted  money”  and  is 
5  perhaps  typical  of  the  difficulty  of  dealing  with  it.  It 
is  impossible  to  know  how  far  we  may  blame  the  in¬ 
dividual  for  doing  that  which  all  of  his  competitors  and 
his  associates  consider  legitimate;  at  the  same  time, 
social  changes  can  only  be  inaugurated  by  those  who 
o  feel  the  unrighteousness  of  contemporary  conditions, 
and  the  expression  of  their  scruples  may  be  the  one 
opportunity  for  pushing  forward  moral  tests  into  that 
dubious  area  wherein  wealth  is  accumulated. 

In  the  course  of  time  a  new  clubhouse  was  built  by 
5  an  old  friend  of  Hull-House  much  interested  in  working 
girls,  and  this  has  been  occupied  for  twelve  years  by 
the  very  successful  cooperating  Jane  Club.  The  in¬ 
cident  of  the  early  refusal  is  associated  in  my  mind  with 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


125 

a  long  talk  upon  the  subject  of  questionable  money  I 
held  with  the  warden  of  Toynbee  Hall,  whom  I  visited 
at  Bristol  where  he  was  then  canon  in  the  Cathedral. 
By  way  of  illustration  he  showed  me  a  beautiful  little 
church  which  had  been  built  by  the  last  slave-trading 
merchant  in  Bristol,  who  had  been  much  disapproved  of 
by  his  fellow  townsmen  and  had  hoped  by  this  trans¬ 
mutation  of  ill-gotten  money  into  exquisite  Gothic 
architecture  to  reconcile  himself  both  to  God  and  man. 
His  impulse  to  build  may  have  been  born  from  his  own 
scruples  or  from  the  quickened  consciences  of  his  neigh¬ 
bors  who  saw  that  the  world-old  iniquity  of  enslaving 
men  must  at  length  come  to  an  end.  The  Abolitionists 
may  have  regarded  this  beautiful  building  as  the  fruit 
of  a  contrite  heart,  or  they  may  have  scorned  it  as  an 
attempt  to  magnify  the  goodness  of  a  slave  trader  and 
thus  perplex  the  doubting  citizens  of  Bristol  in  regard 
to  the  entire  moral  issue. 

Canon  Barnett  did  not  pronounce  judgment  on  the 
Bristol  merchant.  He  was,  however,  quite  clear  upon 
the  point  that  a  higher  moral  standard  for  industrial 
life  must  be  embodied  in  legislation  as  rapidly  as  possi¬ 
ble,  that  it  may  bear  equally  upon  all,  and  that  an 
individual  endeavoring  to  secure  this  legislation  must 
forbear  harsh  judgment.  This  was  doubtless  a  sound 
position,  but  during  all  the  period  of  hot  discussion  con¬ 
cerning  tainted  money  I  never  felt  clear  enough  on  the 
general  principle  involved,  to  accept  the  many  invita- 


126  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


tions  to  write  and  speak  upon  the  subject,  although  I 
received  much  instruction  in  the  many  letters  of  dis¬ 
approval  sent  to  me  by  radicals  of  various  schools  be¬ 
cause  I  was  a  member  of  the  university  extension  staff 
5  of  the  then  new  University  of  Chicago,  the  righteousness 
of  whose  foundation  they  challenged.0 

A  little  incident  of  this  time  illustrated  to  me  the 
confusion  in  the  minds  of  at  least  many  older  men  be¬ 
tween  religious  teaching  and  advancing  morality.  One 
o  morning  I  received  a  letter  from  the  head  of  a  Settle¬ 
ment  in  New  York  expressing  his  perplexity  over  the 
fact  that  his  board  of  trustees  had  asked  money  from  a 
man  notorious  for  his  unscrupulous  business  methods. 
My  correspondent  had  placed  his  resignation  in  the 
s  hands  of  his  board,  that  they  might  accept  it  at  any 
time  when  they  felt  his  utterances  on  the  subject  of 
tainted  money  were  offensive,  for  he  wished  to  be  free 
to  openly  discuss  a  subject  of  such  grave  moral  import. 
The  very  morning  when  my  mind  was  full  of  the  ques- 
o  tions  raised  by  this  letter,  I  received  a  call  from  the 
daughter  of  the  same  business  man  whom  my  friend 
considered  so  unscrupulous.  She  was  passing  through 
Chicago  and  came  to  ask  me  to  give  her  some  argu¬ 
ments  which  she  might  later  use  with  her  father  to  con- 
5  fute  the  charge  that  Settlements  were  irreligious.  She 
said,  ‘  You  see,  he  has  been  asked  to  give  money  to  our 
Settlement  and  would  like  to  do  it,  if  his  conscience  was 
only  clear;  he  disapproves  of  Settlements  because  they 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS  127 

give  no  religious  instruction;  he  has  always  been  a  very 
devout  man.” 

I  remember  later  discussing  the  incident  with  Wash¬ 
ington  Gladden0  who  was  able  to  parallel  it  from  his 
own  experience.  Now  that  this  discussion  upon  tainted  5 
money  has  subsided,  it  is  easy  to  view  it  with  a  certain 
detachment  impossible  at  the  moment,  and  it  is  even 
difficult  to  understand  why  the  feeling  should  have  been 
so  intense,  although  it  doubtless  registered  genuine 
moral  concern.  10 

There  was  room  for  discouragement  in  the  many  un¬ 
successful  experiments  in  cooperation  which  were 
carried  on  in  Chicago  during  the  early  nineties;  a 
carpenter  shop  on  Van  Buren  Street  near  Halsted,  a 
labor  exchange  started  by  the  unemployed,  not  so  1 5 
paradoxical  an  arrangement  as  it  seems,  and  a  very 
ambitious  plan  for  a  country  colony  which  was  finally 
carried  out  at  Ruskin,  Tennessee.  In  spite  of  failures, 
cooperative  schemes  went  on,  some  of  the  same  men 
appearing  in  one  after  another  with  irrepressible  20 
optimism.  I  remember  during  a  cooperative  congress, 
which  met  at  Hull-House  in  the  World’s  Fair  summer, 
that  Mr.  Henry  D.  Lloyd,0  who  collected  records  of 
cooperative  experiments  with  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  other  men  collect  coins  or  pictures,  put' before  25 
the  congress  some  of  the  remarkable  successes  in  Ireland 
and  North  England,  which  he  later  embodied  in  his 
book  on  “Copartnership.”  One  of  the  oldtime  co- 


128  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


operators  denounced  the  modern  method  as  “too  much 
like  cut-throat  business ”  and  declared  himself  in  favor 
of  “principles  which  may  have  failed  over  and  over 
again,  but  are  nevertheless  as  sound  as  the  law  of 
5 gravitation.”  Mr.  Lloyd  and  I  agreed  that  the  fiery 
old  man  presented  as  fine  a  spectacle  of  devotion  to  a 
lost  cause  as  either  of  us  had  ever  seen,  although  we 
both  possessed  memories  well  stored  with  such  romantic 
attachments. 

o  And  yet  this  dream  that  men  shall  cease  to  waste 
strength  in  competition  and  shall  come  to  pool  their 
powers  of  production,  is  coming  to  pass  all  over  the  face 
of  the  earth.  Five  years  later  in  the  same  Hull-House 
hall  in  which  the  cooperative  congress  was  held,  an 
s  Italian  senator  told  a  large  audience  of  his  fellow  coun¬ 
trymen  of  the  successful  system  of  cooperative  banks  in 
north  Italy  and  of  their  cooperative  methods  of  selling 
produce  to  the  value  of  millions  of  francs  annually;  still 
later  Sir  Horace  Plunkett0  related  the  remarkable 
o  successes  in  cooperation  in  Ireland. 

I  have  seldom  been  more  infected  by  enthusiasm  than 
I  once  was  in  Dulwich  at  a  meeting  of  English  co- 
operators  where  I  was  fairly  overwhelmed  by  the  fervor 
underlying  the  businesslike  proceedings  of  the  congress, 
s  and  certainly  when  I  served  as  a  juror  in  the  Paris  Ex¬ 
position  of  1900, °  nothing  in  the  entire  display  in  the 
department  of  Social  Economy  was  so  imposing  as  the 
building  housing  the  exhibit,  which  had  been  erected  by 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


129 

cooperative  trade-unions  without  the  assistance  of  a 
single  contractor. 

And  so  one’s  faith  is  kept  alive  as  one  occasionally 
meets  a  realized  ideal  of  better  human  relations.  At 
least  traces  of  successful  cooperation  are  found  even  in  5 
individualistic  America.  I  recall  my  enthusiasm  on  the 
day  when  I  set  forth  to  lecture,  at  New  Harmony, 
Indiana,  for  I  had  early  been  thrilled  by  the  tale  of 
Robert  Owen,°  as  every  young  person  must  be  who  is 
interested  in  social  reform;  I  was  delighted  to  find  so  10 
much  of  his  spirit  still  clinging  to  the  little  town  which 
had  long  ago  held  one  of  his  ardent  experiments,  al¬ 
though  the  poor  old  cooperators,  who  for  many  years 
claimed  friendship  at  Hull-House  because  they  heard 
that  we  “had  once  tried  a  cooperative  coal  association, ”  1 5 
might  well  have  convinced  me  of  the  persistency  of  the 
cooperative  ideal. 

Many  experiences  in  those  early  years,  although 
vivid,  seemed  to  contain  no  illumination;  nevertheless 
they  doubtless  permanently  affected  our  judgments  20 
concerning  what  is  called  crime  and  vice.  I  recall  a 
series  of  striking  episodes  on  the  day  when  I  took  the 
wife  and  child,  as  well  as  the  old  godfather,  of  an  Italian 
convict  to  visit  him  in  the  State  Penitentiary.  When 
we  approached  the  prison,  the  sight  of  its  heavy  stone  2  5 
walls  and  armed  sentries  threw  the  godfather  into  a 
paroxysm  of  rage;  he  cast  his  hat  upon  the  ground  and 
stamped  upon  it,  tore  his  hair,  and  loudly  fulminated  in 


i3o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

weird  Italian  oaths,  until  one  of  the  guards,  seeing  his 
strange  actions,  came  to  inquire  if  “the  gentleman  was 
having  a  fit.”  When  we  finally  saw  the  convict,  his 
wife,  to  my  extreme  distress,  talked  of  nothing  but  his 
s  striped  clothing,  until  the  poor  man  wept  with  chagrin. 
Upon  our  return  journey  to  Chicago,  the  little  son,  aged 
eight,  presented  me  with  two  oranges,  so  affectionately 
and  gayly  that  I  was  filled  with  reflections  upon  the 
advantage  of  each  generation  making  a  fresh  start, 
owhen  the  train  boy,  finding  the  stolen  fruit  in  my  lap, 
violently  threatened  to  arrest  the  child.  But  stranger 
than  any  episode  was  the  fact  itself  that  neither  the 
convict,  his  wife,  nor  his  godfather  for  a  moment  con¬ 
sidered  him  a  criminal.  He  had  merely  gotten  excited 
5  over  cards  and  had  stabbed  his  adversary  with  a  knife. 
“Why  should  a  man  who  took  his  luck  badly  be  kept 
forever  from  the  sun?”  was  their  reiterated  inquiry. 

I  recall  our  perplexity  over  the  first  girls  who  had 
“gone  astray,”  —  the  poor,  little,  forlorn  objects, 
o  fifteen  and  sixteen  years  old,  with  their  moral  natures 
apparently  untouched  and  unawakened;  one  of  them 
whom  the  police  had  found  in  a  professional  house  and 
asked  us  to  shelter  for  a  few  days  until  she  could  be  used 
as  a  witness,  was  clutching  a  battered  doll  which  she 
5 had  kept  with  her  during  her  six  months  of  an  “evil 
life.”  Two  of  these  prematurely  aged  children  came  to 
us  one  day  directly  from  the  maternity  ward  of  the 
Cook  County  hospital,  each  with  a  baby  in  her  arms, 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


131 

asking  for  protection,  because  they  did  not  want  to  go 
home  for  fear  of  “being  licked.”  For  them  were  no 
jewels  nor  idle  living  such  as  the  story-books  portrayed. 
The  first  of  the  older  women  whom  I  knew  came  to  Hull- 
House  to  ask  that  her  young  sister,  who  was  about  to 
arrive  from  Germany,  might  live  near  us;  she  wished  to 
find  her  respectable  work  and  wanted  her  to  have  the 
“decent  pleasures”  that  Hull-House  afforded.  After 
the  arrangement  had  been  completed  and  I  had  in  a 
measure  recovered  from  my  astonishment  at  the 
businesslike  way  in  which  she  spoke  of  her  own  life,  I 
ventured  to  ask  her  history.  In  a  very  few  words  she 
told  me  that  she  had  come  from  Germany  as  a  music 
teacher  to  an  American  family.  At  the  end  of  two 
years,  in  order  to  avoid  a  scandal  involving  the  head  of 
the  house,  she  had  come  to  Chicago  where  her  child  was 
born,  but  when  the  remittances  ceased  after  its  death, 
finding  herself  without  home  and  resources,  she  had 
gradually  become  involved  in  her  present  mode  of  life. 
By  dint  of  utilizing  her  family  solicitude,  we  finally  in¬ 
duced  her  to  move  into  decent  lodgings  before  her  sister 
arrived,  and  for  a  difficult  year  she  supported  herself  by 
her  exquisite  embroidery.  At  the  end  of  that  time,  she 
gave  up  the  struggle,  the  more  easily  as  her  young  sister, 
well  established  in  the  dressmaking  department  of  a 
large  shop,  had  begun  to  suspect  her  past  life. 

But  discouraging  as  these  and  other  similar  efforts 
often  were,  nevertheless  the  difficulties  were  infinitely 


i32  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

less  in  those  days  when  we  dealt  with  ‘‘fallen  girls” 
than  in  the  years  following  when  the  “white  slave 
traffic”  became  gradually  established  and  when  agon¬ 
ized  parents,  as  well  as  the  victims  themselves,  were 
5  totally  unable  to  account  for  the  situation.  In  the  light 
of  recent  disclosures,  it  seems  as  if  we  were  unaccount¬ 
ably  dull  not  to  have  seen  what  was  happening,  especial¬ 
ly  to  the  Jewish  girls  among  whom  “the  home  trade  of 
the  white  slave  traffic”  was  first  carried  on  and  who 

1  o  were  thus  made  to  break  through  countless  generations 

of  chastity.  We  early  encountered  the  difficulties  of 
that  old  problem  of  restoring  the  woman,  or  even  the 
child,  into  the  society  she  has  once  outraged.  I  well 
remember  our  perplexity  when  we  attempted  to  help 
1 5  two  girls  straight  from  a  Virginia  tobacco  factory,  who 
had  been  decoyed  into  a  disreputable  house  when 
innocently  seeking  a  lodging  on  the  late  evening  of  their 
arrival.  Although  they  had  been  rescued  promptly,  the 
stigma  remained,  and  we  found  it  impossible  to  permit 
20  them  to  join  any  of  the  social  clubs  connected  with 
Hull-House,  not  so  much  because  there  was  danger  of 
contamination,  as  because  the  parents  of  the  club 
members  would  have  resented  their  presence  most  hotly. 
One  of  our  trustees  succeeded  in  persuading  a  repentant 

2  s  girl,  fourteen  years  old,  whom  we  tried  to  give  a  fresh 

start  in  another  part  of  the  city,  to  attend  a  Sunday 
School  class  of  a  large  Chicago  church.  The  trustee 
hoped  that  the  contact  with  nice  girls,  as  well  as  the 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


133 


moral  training,  would  help  the  poor  child  on  her  hard 
road.  But  unfortunately  tales  of  her  shortcomings 
reached  the  superintendent  who  felt  obliged,  in  order 
to  protect  the  other  girls,  to  forbid  her  the  school.  She 
came  back  to  tell  us  about  it,  defiant  as  well  as  dis-  5 
couraged,  and  had  it  not  been  for  the  experience  with 
our  own  clubs,  we  could  easily  have  joined  her  indig¬ 
nation  over  a  church  which  “acted  as  if  its  Sunday 
School  was  a  show  window  for  candy  kids.” 

In  spite  of  poignant  experiences  or,  perhaps,  because  1 
of  them,  the  memory  of  the  first  years  at  Hull-House  is 
more  or  less  blurred  with  fatigue,  for  we  could  of  course 
become  accustomed  only  gradually  to  the  unending 
activity  and  to  the  confusion  of  a  house  constantly  fill¬ 
ing  and  refilling  with  groups  of  people.  The  little  1 
children  who  came  to  the  kindergarten  in  the  morning 
were  followed  by  the  afternoon  clubs  of  older  children, 
and  those  in  turn  made  way  for  the  educational  and 
social  organizations  of  adults,  occupying  every  room  in 
the  house  every  evening.  All  one’s  habits  of  living  had  2 
to  be  readjusted,  and  any  student’s  tendency  to  sit  with 
a  book  by  the  fire  was  of  necessity  definitely  abandoned. 

To  thus  renounce  “the  luxury  of  personal  preference” 
was,  however,  a  mere  trifle  compared  to  our  perplexity 
over  the  problems  of  an  industrial  neighborhood  situ-  2 
ated  in  an  unorganized  city.  Life  pressed  hard  in  many 
directions  and  yet  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  rather 
interesting  that  when  we  were  so  distressed  over  its 


i34  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

stern  aspects  and  so  impressed  with  the  lack  of  munic¬ 
ipal  regulations,  the  first  building  erected  for  Hull- 
House  should  have  been  designed  for  an  art  gallery,  for 
although  it  contained  a  reading-room  on  the  first  floor 
5  and  a  studio  above,  the  largest  space  on  the  second 
floor  was  carefully  designed  and  lighted  for  art  exhibits, 
which  had  to  do  only  with  the  cultivation  of  that  which 
appealed  to  the  powers  of  enjoyment  as  over  against  a 
wage-earning  capacity.  It  was  also  significant  that  a 
o  Chicago  business  man,  fond  of  pictures  himself,  respond¬ 
ed  to  this  first  appeal  of  the  new  and  certainly  puzzling 
undertaking  called  a  Settlement. 

The  situation  was  somewhat  complicated  by  the  fact 
that  at  the  time  the  building  was  erected  in  1891,  our 
s  free  lease  of  the  land  upon  which  Hull-House  stood  ex¬ 
pired  in  1895.  The  donor  of  the  building,  however, 
overcame  the  difficulty  by  simply  calling  his  gift  a 
donation  of  a  thousand  dollars  a  year.  This  restriction 
of  course  necessitated  the  simplest  sort  of  a  structure, 
o  although  I  remember  on  the  exciting  day  when  the  new 
building  was  promised  to  us,  that  I  looked  up  my 
European  notebook  which  contained  the  record  of  my 
experience  in  Ulm,  hoping  that  I  might  find  a  description 
of  what  I  then  thought  “a  Cathedral  of  Humanity” 
5  ought  to  be.  The  description  was  “low  and  widespread- 
ing  as  to  include  all  men  in  fellowship  and  mutual 
responsibility  even  as  the  older  pinnacles  and  spires 
indicated  communion  with  God.”  The  description  did 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS  135 

not  prove  of  value  as  an  architectural  motive  I  am 
afraid,  although  the  architects,  who  have  remained  our 
friends  through  all  the  years,  performed  marvels  with 
a  combination  of  complicated  demands  and  little  money. 
At  the  moment  when  I  read  this  girlish  outbreak  it 
gave  me  much  comfort,  for  in  those  days  in  addition  to 
our  other  perplexities  Hull-House  was  often  called 
irreligious. 

These  first  buildings  were  very  precious  to  us  and  it 
afforded  us  the  greatest  pride  and  pleasure  as  one 
building  after  another  was  added  to  the  Hull-House 
group.  They  clothed  in  brick  and  mortar  and  made 
visible  to  the  world  that  which  we  were  trying  to  do; 
they  stated  to  Chicago  that  education  and  recreation 
ought  to  be  extended  to  the  immigrants.  The  boys 
came  in  great  numbers  to  our  provisional  gymnasium 
fitted  up  in  a  former  saloon,  and  it  seemed  to  us  quite  as 
natural  that  a  Chicago  man,  fond  of  athletics,  should 
erect  a  building  for  them,  as  that  the  boys  should 
clamor  for  more  room. 

I  do  not  wish  to  give  a  false  impression,  for  we  were 
often  bitterly  pressed  for  money  and  worried  by  the 
prospect  of  unpaid  bills,  and  we  gave  up  one  golden 
scheme  after  another  because  we  could  not  afford  it;  we 
cooked  the  meals  and  kept  the  books  and  washed  the 
windows  without  a  thought  of  hardship  if  we  thereby 
saved  money  for  the  consummation  of  some  ardently 
desired  undertaking. 


136  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

But  in  spite  of  our  financial  stringency,  I  always  be¬ 
lieved  that  money  would  be  given  when  we  had  once 
clearly  reduced  the  Settlement  idea  to  the  actual  deed. 
This  chapter,  therefore,  would  be  incomplete  if  it  did 
5  not  record  a  certain  theory  of  nonresistance  or  rather 
universal  good  will  which  I  had  worked  out  in  con¬ 
nection  with  the  Settlement  idea  and  which  was  later 
so  often  and  so  rudely  disturbed.  At  that  time  I  had 
come  to  believe  that  if  the  activities  of  Hull-House 
owere  ever  misunderstood,  it  would  be  either  because 
there  was  not  time  to  fully  explain  or  because  our 
motives  had  become  mixed,  for  I  was  convinced  that 
disinterested  action  was  like  truth  or  beauty  in  its 
lucidity  and  power  of  appeal. 

5  But  more  gratifying  than  any  understanding  or  re¬ 
sponse  from  without  could  possibly  be,  was  the  con¬ 
sciousness  that  a  growing  group  of  residents  was 
gathering  at  Hull-House,  held  together  in  that  soundest 
of  all  social  bonds,  the  companionship  of  mutual  inter- 
o  ests.  These  residents  came  primarily  because  they  were 
genuinely  interested  in  the  social  situation  and  believed 
that  the  Settlement  was  valuable  as  a  method  of  ap¬ 
proach  to  it.  A  house  in  which  the  men  residents  lived 
was  opened  across  the  street,  and  at  the  end  of  the  first 
5  five  years  the  Hull-House  residential  force  numbered 
fifteen,  a  majority  of  whom  still  remain  identified  with 
the  Settlement. 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


i37 


Even  in  those  early  years  we  caught  glimpses  of  the 
fact  that  certain  social  sentiments,  which  are  “the 
difficult  and  cumulating  product  of  human  growth” 
and  which  like  all  higher  aims  live  only  by  communion 
and  fellowship,  are  cultivated  most  easily  in  the  foster-  5 
ing  soil  of  a  community  life. 

Occasionally  I  obscurely  felt  as  if  a  demand  were 
being  made  upon  us  for  a  ritual  which  should  express 
and  carry  forward  the  hope  of  the  social  movement.  I 
was  constantly  bewildered  by  the  number  of  requests  I  10 
received  to  officiate  at  funeral  services  and  by  the 
curious  confessions  made  to  me  by  total  strangers.  For 
a  time  I  accepted  the  former  and  on  one  awful  occasion 
furnished  “the  poetic  part”  of  a  wedding  ceremony 
really  performed  by  a  justice  of  the  peace,  but  I  soon  15 
learned  to  steadfastly  refuse  such  offices,  although  I  saw 
that  for  many  people  without  church  affiliations  the 
vague  humanitarianism  the  Settlement  represented  was 
the  nearest  approach  they  could  find  to  an  expression  of 
their  religious  sentiments.  20 

These  hints  of  what  the  Settlement  might  mean  to  at 
least  a  few  spirits  among  its  contemporaries  became 
clear  to  me  for  the  first  time  one  summer’s  day  in  rural 
England,  when  I  discussed  with  John  Trevor  his  at¬ 
tempts  to  found  a  labor  church  and  his  desire  to  turn  25 
the  toil  and  danger  attached  to  the  life  of  the  working¬ 
man  into  the  means  of  a  universal  fellowship.  That 


i38  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

very  year  a  papyrus  leaf  brought  to  the  British  Museum 
from  Egypt,  containing  among  other  sayings  of  Jesus, 
“Raise  the  stone,  and  there  thou  shalt  find  me;  cleave 
the  wood  and  I  am  there,”  was  a  powerful  reminder  to 
5  all  England  of  the  basic  relations  between  daily  labor 
and  Christian  teaching. 

In  those  early  years  at  Hull-House  we  were,  however, 
in  no  danger  of  losing  ourselves  in  mazes  of  speculation 
or  mysticism,  and  there  was  shrewd  penetration  in  a 
x  o  compliment  I  received  from  one  of  our  Scotch  neighbors. 
He  came  down  Polk  Street  as  I  was  standing  near  the 
foundations  of  our  new  gymnasium,  and  in  response  to 
his  friendly  remark  that  “Hull-House  was  spreading 
out,”  I  replied  that  “Perhaps  we  were  spreading  out 
i5  too  fast.”  “Oh,  no,”  he  rejoined,  “you  can  afford  to 
spread  out  wide,  you  are  so  well  planted  in  the  mud,” 
giving  the  compliment,  however,  a  practical  turn,  as  he 
glanced  at  the  deep  mire  on  the  then  unpaved  street. 
It  was  this  same  condition  of  Polk  Street  which  had 
20  caused  the  crown  prince  of  Belgium0  when  he  was 
brought  upon  a  visit  to  Hull-House  to  shake  his  head 
and  meditatively  remark,  “There  is  not  such  a  street  — 
no,  not  one  —  in  all  the  territory  of  Belgium.” 

At  the  end  of  five  years  the  residents  of  Hull-House 
2  s  published  some  first  found  facts  and  our  reflections 
thereon  in  a  book  called  “Hull-House  Maps  and 
Papers.”  The  maps  were  taken  from  information  col- 


SOME  EARLY  UNDERTAKINGS 


i39 


lected  by  one  of  the  residents  for  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  Labor  in  the  investigation  into  “the  slums 
of  great  cities”  and  the  papers  treated  of  various 
neighborhood  matters  with  candor  and  genuine  concern 
if  not  with  skill.  The  first  edition  became  exhausted  in  5 
two  years,  and  apparently  the  Boston  publisher  did 
not  consider  the  book  worthy  of  a  second. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
Problems  of  Poverty 

That  neglected  and  forlorn  old  age  is  daily  brought 
to  the  attention  of  a  Settlement  which  undertakes  to 
bear  its  share  of  the  neighborhood  burden  imposed  by 
poverty,  was  pathetically  clear  to  us  during  our  first 
s  months  of  residence  at  Hull-House.  One  day  a  boy  of 
ten  led  a  tottering  old  lady  into  the  House,  saying  that 
she  had  slept  for  six  weeks  in  their  kitchen  on  a  bed 
made  up  next  to  the  stove;  that  she  had  come  when  her 
son  died,  although  none  of  them  had  ever  seen  her  be- 
i  o  fore;  but  because  her  son  had  ‘‘once  worked  in  the  same 
shop  with  Pa  she  thought  of  him  when  she  had  no¬ 
where  to  go.”  The  little  fellow  concluded  by  saying 
that  our  house  was  so  much  bigger  than  theirs  that  he 
thought  we  would  have  more  room  for  beds.  The  old 
1 5  woman  herself  said  absolutely  nothing,  but  looking  on 
with  that  gripping  fear  of  the  poorhouse  in  her  eyes,  she 
was  a  living  embodiment  of  that  dread  which  is  so 
heart-breaking  that  the  occupants  of  the  County  In¬ 
firmary  themselves  seem  scarcely  less  wretched  than 
20  those  who  are  making  their  last  stand  against  it. 

This  look  was  almost  more  than  I  could  bear  for  only 
a  few  days  before  some  frightened  women  had  bidden 

140 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


141 


me  come  quickly  to  the  house  of  an  old  German  woman, 
whom  two  men  from  the  county  agent’s  office  were  at¬ 
tempting  to  remove  to  the  County  Infirmary.  The 
poor  old  creature  had  thrown  herself  bodily  upon  a 
small  and  battered  chest  of  drawers  and  clung  there, 
clutching  it  so  firmly  that  it  would  have  been  impossible 
to  remove  her  without  also  taking  the  piece  of  furniture. 
She  did  not  weep  nor  moan  nor  indeed  make  any  human 
sound,  but  between  her  broken  gasps  for  breath  she 
squealed  shrilly  like  a  frightened  animal  caught  in  a 
trap.  The  little  group  of  women  and  children  gathered 
at  her  door  stood  aghast  at  this  realization  of  the  black 
dread  which  always  clouds  the  lives  of  the  very  poor 
when  work  is  slack,  but  which  constantly  grows  more 
imminent  and  threatening  as  old  age  approaches.  The 
neighborhood  women  and  I  hastened  to  make  all  sorts 
of  promises  as  to  the  support  of  the  old  woman  and  the 
county  officials,  only  too  glad  to  be  rid  of  their  un¬ 
happy  duty,  left  her  to  our  ministrations.  This  dread  of 
the  poorhouse,  the  result  of  centuries  of  deterrent  Poor 
Law  administration,  seemed  to  me  not  without  some 
justification  one  summer  when  I  found  myself  per¬ 
petually  distressed  by  the  unnecessary  idleness  and 
forlornness  of  the  old  women  in  the  Cook  County  In¬ 
firmary,  many  of  whom  I  had  known  in  the  years  when 
activity  was  still  a  necessity,  and  when  they  yet  felt 
bustlingly  important.  To  take  away  from  an  old 
woman  whose  life  has  been  spent  in  household  cares  all 


1 42  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  foolish  little  belongings  to  which  her  affections  cling 
and  to  which  her  very  fingers  have  become  accustomed, 
is  to  take  away  her  last  incentive  to  activity,  almost  to 
life  itself.  To  give  an  old  woman  only  a  chair  and  a 
s  bed,  to  leave  her  no  cupboard  in  which  her  treasures 
may  be  stowed,  not  only  that  she  may  take  them  out 
when  she  desires  occupation,  but  that  her  mind  may 
dwell  upon  them  in  moments  of  reverie,  is  to  reduce 
living  almost  beyond  the  limit  of  human  endurance. 

10  The  poor  creature  who  clung  so  desperately  to  her 
chest  of  drawers  was  really  clinging  to  the  last  remnant 
of  normal  living  —  a  symbol  of  all  she  was  asked 'to 
renounce.  For  several  years  after  this  summer  I  in¬ 
vited  five  or  six  old  women  to  take  a  two  weeks’  vaca- 

1  s  tion  from  the  poorhouse  which  they  eagerly  and  even 

gayly  accepted.  Almost  all  the  old  men  in  the  County 
Infirmary  wander  away  each  summer  taking  their 
chances  for  finding  food  or  shelter  and  return  much  re¬ 
freshed  by  the  little  “tramp,”  but  the  old  women  can- 

20  not  do  this  unless  they  have  some  help  from  the  outside, 
and  yet  the  expenditure  of  a  very  little  money  secures 
for  them  the  coveted  vacation.  I  found  that  a  few 
pennies  paid  their  car  fare  into  town,  a  dollar  a  week 
procured  a  lodging  with  an  old  acquaintance;  assured 

2  s  of  two  good  meals  a  day  in  the  Hull-House  coffee-house 

they  could  count  upon  numerous  cups  of  tea  among  old 
friends  to  whom  they  would  airily  state  that  they  had 
“come  out  for  a  little  change”  and  hadn’t  yet  made  up 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


i43 


their  minds  about  “going  in  again  for  the  winter.” 
They  thus  enjoyed  a  two  weeks’  vacation  to  the  top  of 
their  bent  and  returned  with  wondrous  tales  of  their 
adventures,  with  which  they  regaled  the  other  paupers 
during  the  long  winter. 

The  reminiscences  of  these  old  women,  their  shrewd 
comments  upon  life,  their  sense  of  having  reached  a 
point  where  they  may  at  last  speak  freely  with  nothing 
to  lose  because  of  their  frankness,  makes  them  often  the 
most  delightful  of  companions.  I  recall  one  of  my 
guests,  the  mother  of  many  scattered  children,  whose 
one  bright  spot  through  all  the  dreary  years  had  been 
the  wedding  feast  of  her  son  Mike,  —  a  feast  which  had 
become  transformed  through  long  meditation  into  the 
nectar  and  ambrosia  of  the  very  gods.  As  a  farewell 
fling  before  she  went  “in”  again,  we  dined  together  upon 
chicken  pie,  but  it  did  not  taste  like  “the  chicken  pie  at 
Mike’s  wedding”  and  she  was  disappointed  after  all. 

Even  death  itself  sometimes  fails  to  bring  the  dignity 
and  serenity  which  one  would  fain  associate  with  old 
age.  I  recall  the  dying  hour  of  one  old  Scotchwoman 
whose  long  struggle  to  “keep  respectable”  had  so  em¬ 
bittered  her,  that  her  last  words  were  gibes  and  taunts 
for  those  who  were  trying  to  minister  to  her.  “So  you 
came  in  yourself  this  morning,  did  you?  You  only  sent 
things  yesterday.  I  guess  you  knew  when  the  doctor 
was  coming.  Don’t  try  to  warm  my  feet  with  anything 
but  that  old  jacket  that  I’ve  got  there;  it  belonged  to 


i44  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

my  boy  who  was  drowned  at  sea  nigh  thirty  years  ago, 
but  it’s  warmer  yet  with  human  feelings  then  any  of 
your  damned  charity  hot-water  bottles.  ”  Suddenly  the 
harsh  gasping  voice  was  stilled  in  death  and  I  awaited 
s  the  doctor’s  coming  shaken  and  horrified. 

The  lack  of  municipal  regulation  already  referred  to 
was,  in  the  early  days  of  Hull-House,  paralleled  by  the 
inadequacy  of  the  charitable  efforts  of  the  city  and  an 
unfounded  optimism  that  there  was  no  real  poverty 
o  among  us.  Twenty  years  ago  there  was  no  Charity 
Organization  Society  in  Chicago  and  the  Visiting  Nurse 
Association  had  not  yet  begun  its  beneficent  work,  while 
the  relief  societies,  although  conscientiously  adminis¬ 
tered,  were  inadequate  in  extent  and  antiquated  in 
s  method. 

As  social  reformers  gave  themselves  over  to  dis¬ 
cussion  of  general  principles,  so  the  poor  invariably  ac¬ 
cused  poverty  itself  of  their  destruction.  I  recall  a 
certain  Mrs.  Moran,  who  was  returning  one  rainy  day 
o  from  the  office  of  the  county  agent  with  her  arms  full  of 
paper  bags  containing  beans  and  flour  which  alone  lay 
between  her  children  and  starvation.  Although  she  had 
no  money  she  boarded  a  street  car  in  order  to  save  her 
booty  from  complete  destruction  by  the  rain,  and  as 
5  the  burst  bags  dropped  “flour  on  the  ladies’  dresses” 
and  “beans  all  over  the  place,”  she  was  sharply  rep¬ 
rimanded  by  the  conductor,  who  was  further  exasper¬ 
ated  when  he  discovered  she  had  no  fare.  He  put  her 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


HS 

off,  as  she  had  hoped  he  would,  almost  in  front  of  Hull- 
House.  She  related  to  us  her  state  of  mind  as  she 
stepped  off  the  car  and  saw  the  last  of  her  wares  dis¬ 
appearing;  she  admitted  she  forgot  the  proprieties  and 
‘‘cursed  a  little;”  but,  curiously  enough,  she  pronounced  5 
her  malediction,  not  against  the  rain  nor  the  conductor, 
nor  yet  against  the  worthless  husband  who  had  been 
sent  up  to  the  city  prison,  but,  true  to  the  Chicago  spirit 
of  the  moment,  went  to  the  root  of  the  matter  and 
roundly  “cursed  poverty.”  10 

This  spirit  of  generalization  and  lack  of  organization 
among  the  charitable  forces  of  the  city  was  painfully 
revealed  in  that  terrible  winter  after  the  World’s  Fair,0 
when  the  general  financial  depression  throughout  the 
country  was  much  intensified  in  Chicago  by  the  numbers  1 5 
of  unemployed  stranded  at  the  close  of  the  exposition. 
When  the  first  cold  weather  came  the  police  stations 
and  the  very  corridors  of  the  city  hall  were  crowded  by 
men  who  could  afford  no  other  lodging.  They  made 
huge  demonstrations  on  the  lake  front,  reminding  one  20 
of  the  London  gatherings  in  Trafalgar  Square.0 

It  was  the  winter  in  which  Mr.  Stead0  wrote  his  in¬ 
dictment  of  Chicago.  I  can  vividly  recall  his  visits  to 
Hull-House,  some  of  them  between  eleven  and  twelve 
o’clock  at  night,  when  he  would  come  in  wet  and  2  5 
hungry  from  an  investigation  of  the  levee  district,  and, 
while  he  was  drinking  hot  chocolate  before  an  open  fire, 
would  relate  in  one  of  his  curious  monologues,  his  ex- 


1 46  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

perience  as  an  out-of-door  laborer  standing  in  line  with¬ 
out  an  overcoat  for  two  hours  in  the  sleet,  that  he  might 
have  a  chance  to  sweep  the  streets;  or  his  adventures 
with  a  crook,  who  mistook  him  for  one  of  his  own  kind 
5  and  offered  him  a  place  as  an  agent  for  a  gambling 
house,  which  he  promptly  accepted.  Mr.  Stead  was 
much  impressed  with  the  mixed  goodness  in  Chicago, 
the  lack  of  rectitude;  in  many  high  places,  the  simple 
kindness  of  the  most  wretched  to  each  other.  Before  he 
o published  “If  Christ  Came  to  Chicago”  he  made  his 
attempt  to  rally  the  diverse  moral  forces  of  the  city  in 
a  huge  mass  meeting,  which  resulted  in  a  temporary 
organization,  later  developing  into  the  Civic  Federation. 
I  was  a  member  of  the  committee  of  five  appointed  to 
5  carry  out  the  suggestions  made  in  this  remarkable  meet¬ 
ing,  and  our  first  concern  was  to  appoint  a  committee  to 
deal  with  the  unemployed.  But  when  has  a  committee 
ever  dealt  satisfactorily  with  the  unemployed?  Relief 
stations  were  opened  in  various  parts  of  the  city, 
o  temporary  lodging  houses  were  established,  Hull-House 
undertaking  to  lodge  the  homeless  women  who  could  be 
received  nowhere  else;  employment  stations  were 
opened  giving  sewing  to  the  women,  and  street  sweeping 
for  the  men  was  organized.  It  was  in  connection  with 
5  the  latter  that  the  perplexing  question  of  the  danger  of 
permanently  lowering  wages  at  such  a  crisis,  in  the 
praiseworthy  effort  to  bring  speedy  relief,  was  brought 
home  to  me.  I  insisted  that  it  was  better  to  have  the 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


i47 


men  work  half  a  day  for  seventy-five  cents  than  a  whole 
day  for  a  dollar,  better  that  they  should  earn  three 
dollars  in  two  days  than  in  three  days.  I  resigned  from 
the  street  cleaning  committee  in  despair  of  making  the 
rest  of  the  committee  understand  that,  as  our  real  oh-  5 
ject  was  not  street  cleaning  but  the  help  of  the  unem¬ 
ployed,  we  must  treat  the  situation  in  such  wise  that 
the  men  would  not  be  worse  off  when  they  returned  to 
their  normal  occupations.  The  discussion  opened  up 
situations  new  to  me  and  carried  me  far  afield  in  perhaps  1  o 
the  most  serious  economic  reading  I  have  ever  done. 

A  beginning  also  was  then  made  toward  a  Bureau  of 
Organized  Charities,  the  main  office  being  put  in  charge 
of  a  young  man  recently  come  from  Boston,  who  lived 
at  Hull-House.  But  to  employ  scientific  methods  for  1 5 
the  first  time  at  such  a  moment  involved  difficulties,  and 
the  most  painful  episode  of  the  winter  for  me  came  from 
an  attempt  on  my  part  to  conform  to  carefully  received 
instructions.  A  shipping  clerk  whom  I  had  known  for 
a  long  time  had  lost  his  place,  as  so  many  people  had  20 
that  year,  and  came  to  the  relief  station  established  at 
Hull-House  four  or  five  times  to  secure  help  for  his 
family.  I  told  him  one  day  of  the  opportunity  for  work 
on  the  drainage  canal  and  intimated  that  if  any  em¬ 
ployment  were  obtainable,  he  ought  to  exhaust  that  25 
possibility  before  asking  for  help.  The  man  replied 
that  he  had  always  worked  indoors  and  that  he  could 
not  endure  outside  work  in  winter.  I  am  grateful  to 


148  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


remember  that  I  was  too  uncertain  to  be  severe,  al¬ 
though  I  held  to  my  instructions.  He  did  not  come 
again  for  relief,  but  worked  for  two  days  digging  on  the 
canal,  where  he  contracted  pneumonia  and  died  a  week 
slater.  I  have  never  lost  trace  of  the  two  little  children 
he  left  behind  him,  although  I  cannot  see  them  without 
a  bitter  consciousness  that  it  was  at  their  expense  I 
learned  that  life  cannot  be  administered  by  definite 
rules  and  regulations;  that  wisdom  to  deal  with  a  man’s 

1  o  difficulties  comes  only  through  some  knowledge  of  his 

life  and  habits  as  a  whole;  and  that  to  treat  an  isolated 
episode  is  almost  sure  to  invite  blundering. 

It  was  also  during  this  winter  that  I  became  per¬ 
manently  impressed  with  the  kindness  of  the  poor  to 
1 5  each  other;  the  woman  who  lives  upstairs  will  willingly 
share  her  breakfast  with  the  family  below  because  she 
knows  they  “are  hard  up”;  the  man  who  boarded  with 
them  last  winter  will  give  a  month’s  rent  because  he 
knows  the  father  of  the  family  is  out  of  work;  the  baker 
20  across  the  street,  who  is  fast  being  pushed  to  the  wall  by 
his  downtown  competitors,  will  send  across  three  loaves 
of  stale  bread  because  he  has  seen  the  children  looking 
longingly  into  his  window  and  suspects  they  are  hungry. 
There  are  also  the  families  who,  during  times  of  business 

2  5  depression,  are  obliged  to  seek  help  from  the  county  or 

some  benevolent  society,  but  who  are  themselves  most 
anxious  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  pauper  class, 
with  whom  indeed  they  do  not  in  the  least  belong. 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


149 


Charles  Booth,0  in  his  brilliant  chapter  on  the  unem¬ 
ployed,  expresses  regret  that  the  problems  of  the  work¬ 
ing  class  are  so  often  confounded  with  the  problems  of 
the  inefficient  and  the  idle,  that  although  working 
people  live  in  the  same  street  with  those  in  need  of  5 
charity,  to  thus  confound  two  problems  is  to  render  the 
solution  of  both  impossible. 

I  remember  one  family  in  which  the  father  had  been 
out  of  work  for  this  same  winter,  most  of  the  furniture 
had  been  pawned,  and  as  the  worn-out  shoes  could  not  10 
be  replaced  the  children  could  not  go  to  school.  The 
mother  was  ill  and  barely  able  to  come  for  the  supplies 
and  medicines.  Two  years  later  she  invited  me  to  supper 
one  Sunday  evening  in  the  little  home  which  had  been 
completely  restored,  and  she  gave  as  a  reason  for  the  1 5 
invitation  that  she  couldn’t  bear  to  have  me  remember 
them  as  they  had  been  during  that  one  winter,  which 
she  insisted  had  been  unique  in  her  twelve  years  of 
married  life.  She  said  that  it  was  as  if  she  had  met  me, 
not  as  I  am  ordinarily,  but  as  I  should  appear  misshapen  2  o 
with  rheumatism  or  with  a  face  distorted  by  neuralgic 
pain;  that  it  was  not  fair  to  judge  poor  people  that  way. 
She  perhaps  unconsciously  illustrated  the  difference  be¬ 
tween  the  relief-station  relation  to  the  poor  and  the 
Settlement  relation  to  its  neighbors,  the  latter  wishing  2  5 
to  know  them  through  all  the  varying  conditions  of 
life,  to  stand  by  when  they  are  in  distress,  but  by  no 
means  to  drop  intercourse  with  them  when  normal 


iso  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

prosperity  has  returned,  enabling  the  relation  to  become 
more  social  and  free  from  economic  disturbance. 

Possibly  something  of  the  same  effort  has  to  be  made 
within  the  Settlement  itself  to  keep  its  own  sense  of 
5  proportion  in  regard  to  the  relation  of  the  crowded  city 
quarter  to  the  rest  of  the  country.  It  was  in  the  spring 
following  this  terrible  winter,  during  a  journey  to  meet 
lecture  engagements  in  California,  that  I  found  myself 
amazed  at  the  large  stretches  of  open  country  and 
o  prosperous  towns  through  which  we  passed  day  by  day, 
whose  existence  I  had  quite  forgotten. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  summer  of  1895,  I  served  as 
a  member  on  a  commission  appointed  by  the  mayor  of 
Chicago,  to  investigate  conditions  in  the  county  poor- 
5  house,  public  attention  having  become  centered  on  it 
through  one  of  those  distressing  stories,  which  exagger¬ 
ates  the  wrong  in  a  public  institution  while  at  the  same 
time  it  reveals  conditions  which  need  to  be  rectified. 
However  necessary  publicity  is  for  securing  reformed 
©administration,  however  useful  such  exposures  may  be 
for  political  purposes,  the  whole  is  attended  by  such  a 
waste  of  the  most  precious  human  emotions,  by  such  a 
tearing  of  living  tissue,  that  it  can  scarcely  be  endured. 
Every  time  I  entered  Hull-House  during  the  days  of 
s  the  investigation,  I  would  find  waiting  for  me  from 
twenty  to  thirty  people  whose  friends  and  relatives 
were  in  the  suspected  institution,  all  in  such  acute  dis¬ 
tress  of  mind  that  to  see  them. was  to  look  upon  the 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


151 

victims  of  deliberate  torture.  In  most  cases  my  visitor 
would  state  that  it  seemed  impossible  to  put  their  in¬ 
valids  in  any  other  place,  but  if  these  stories  were  true, 
something  must  be  done.  Many  of  the  patients  were 
taken  out  only  to  be  returned  after  a  few  days  or  weeks 
to  meet  the  sullen  hostility  of  their  attendants  and  with 
their  own  attitude  changed  from  confidence  to  timidity 
and  alarm. 

This  piteous  dependence  of  the  poor  upon  the  good 
will  of  public  officials  was  made  clear  to  us  in  an  early 
experience  with  a  peasant  woman  straight  from  the 
fields  of  Germany,  whom  we  met  during  our  first  six 
months  at  Hull-House.  Her  four  years  in  America  had 
been  spent  in  patiently  carrying  water  up  and  down  two 
flights  of  stairs,  and  in  washing  the  heavy  flannel  suits 
of  iron  foundry  workers.  For  this  her  pay  had  averaged 
thirty-five  cents  a  day.  Three  of  her  daughters  had  fallen 
victims  to  the  vice  of  the  city.  The  mother  was  be¬ 
wildered  and  distressed,  but  understood  nothing.  We 
were  able  to  induce  the  betrayer  of  one  daughter  to 
marry  her;  the  second,  after  a  tedious  lawsuit,  supported 
his  child;  with  the  third  we  were  able  to  do  nothing. 
This  woman  is  now  living  with  her  family  in  a  little 
house  seventeen  miles  from  the  city.  She  has  made  two 
payments  on  her  land  and  is  a  lesson  to  all  beholders 
as  she  pastures  her  cow  up  and  down  the  railroad 
tracks  and  makes  money  from  her  ten  acres.  She  did 
not  need  charity  for  she  had  an  immense  capacity  for 


152  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

hard  work,  but  she  sadly  needed  the  service  of  the 
State’s  attorney  office,  enforcing  the  laws  designed  for 
the  protection  of  such  girls  as  her  daughters. 

We  early  found  ourselves  spending  many  hours  in 
5  efforts  to  secure  support  for  deserted  women,  insurance 
for  bewildered  widows,  damages  for  injured  operators, 
furniture  from  the  clutches  of  the  installment  store. 
The  Settlement  is  valuable  as  an  information  and  inter¬ 
pretation  bureau.  It  constantly  acts  between  the 
o  various  institutions  of  the  city  and  the  people  for  whose 
benefit  these  institutions  were  erected.  The  hospitals, 
the  county  agencies,  and  State  asylums  are  often  but 
vague  rumors  to  the  people  who  need  them  most.  An¬ 
other  function  of  the  Settlement  to  its  neighborhood 
s  resembles  that  of  the  big  brother  whose  mere  presence 
on  the  playground  protects  the  little  one  from  bullies. 

We  early  learned  to  know  the  children  of  hard  driven 
mothers  who  went  out  to  work  all  day,  sometimes  leav¬ 
ing  the  little  things  in  the  casual  care  of  a  neighbor,  but 
o  often  locking  them  into  their  tenement  rooms.  The 
first  three  crippled  children  we  encountered  in  the 
neighborhood  had  all  been  injured  while  their  mothers 
were  at  work:  one  had  fallen  out  of  a  third-story 
window,  another  had  been  burned,  and  the  third  had  a 
s  curved  spine  due  to  the  fact  that  for  three  years  he  had 
been  tied  all  day  long  to  the  leg  of  the  kitchen  table, 
only  released  at  noon  by  his  older  brother  who  hastily 
ran  in  from  a  neighboring  factory  to  share  his  lunch 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


i53 

with  him.  When  the  hot  weather  came  the  restless 
children  could  not  brook  the  confinement  of  the  stuffy 
rooms,  and,  as  it  was  not  considered  safe  to  leave  the 
doors  open  because  of  sneak  thieves,  many  of  the 
children  were  locked  out.  During  our  first  summer  an 
increasing  number  of  these  poor  little  mites  would 
wander  into  the  cool  hallway  of  Hull-House.  We  kept 
them  there  and  fed  them  at  noon,  in  return  for  which 
we  were  sometimes  offered  a  hot  penny  which  had  been 
held  in  a  tight  little  fist  “ever  since  mother  left  this 
morning,  to  buy  something  to  eat  with.  ”  Out  of  kinder¬ 
garten  hours  our  little  guests  noisily  enjoyed  the 
hospitality  of  our  bedrooms  under  the  so-called  care  of 
any  resident  who  volunteered  to  keep  an  eye  on  them, 
but  later  they  were  moved  into  a  neighboring  apart¬ 
ment  under  more  systematic  supervision. 

Hull-House  was  thus  committed  to  a  day  nursery 
which  we  sustained  for  sixteen  years,  first  in  a  little 
cottage  on  a  side  street  and  then  in  a  building  designed 
for  its  use  called  the  Children’s  House.  It  is  now 
carried  on  by  the  United  Charities  of  Chicago  in  a 
finely  equipped  building  on  our  block,  where  the  im¬ 
migrant  mothers  are  cared  for  as  well  as  the  children, 
and  where  they  are  taught  the  things  which  will  make 
life  in  America  more  possible.  Our  early  day  nursery 
brought  us  into  natural  relations  with  the  poorest 
women  of  the  neighborhood,  many  of  whom  were  bear¬ 
ing  the  burden  of  dissolute  and  incompetent  husbands 


154  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

in  addition  to  the  support  of  their  children.  Some  'of 
them  presented  an  impressive  manifestation  of  that 
miracle  of  affection  which  outlives  abuse,  neglect,  and 
crime,  —  the  affection  which  cannot  be  plucked  from 
5  the  heart  where  it  has  lived,  although  it  may  serve  only 
to  torture  and  torment.  “Has  your  husband  come 
back?”  you  inquire  of  Mrs.  S.,  whom  you  have  known 
for  eight  years  as  an  overworked  woman  bringing  her 
three  delicate  children  every  morning  to  the  nursery; 
oshe  is  bent  under  the  double  burden  of  earning  the 
money  which  supports  them  and  giving  them  the 
tender  care  which  alone  keeps  them  alive.  The  oldest 
two  children  have  at  last  gone  to  work,  and  Mrs.  S. 
has  allowed  herself  the  luxury  of  staying  at  home  two 
s  days  a  week.  And  now  the  worthless  husband  is  back 
again  —  the  “gentlemanly  gambler”  type  who,  through 
all  vicissitudes,  manages  to  present  a  white  shirtfront 
and  a  gold  watch  to  the  world,  but  who  is  dissolute, 
idle,  and  extravagant.  You  dread  to  think  how  much 
ohis  presence  will  increase  the  drain  upon  the  family  ex¬ 
chequer,  and  you  know  that  he  stayed  away  until  he 
was  certain  that  the  children  were  old  enough  to  earn 
money  for  his  luxuries.  Mrs.  S.  does  not  pretend  to 
take  his  return  lightly,  but  she  replies  in  all  seriousness 
5  and  simplicity,  “You  know  my  feeling  for  him  has 
never  changed.  You  may  think  me  foolish,  but  I  was 
always  proud  of  his  good  looks  and  educated  appear¬ 
ance.  I  was  lonely  and  homesick  during  those  eight 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


i55 


years  when  the  children  were  little  and  needed  so  much 
doctoring,  but  I  could  never  bring  myself  to  feel  hard 
toward  him,  and  I  used  to  pray  the  good  Lord  to  keep 
him  from  harm  and  bring  him  back  to  us;  so,  of  course, 
I’m  thankful  now.”  She  passes  on  with  a  dignity  which 
gives  one  a  new  sense  of  the  security  of  affection. 

I  recall  a  similar  case  of  a  woman  who  had  supported 
her  three  children  for  five  years,  during  which  time  her 
dissolute  husband  constantly  demanded  money  for 
drink  and  kept  her  perpetually  worried  and  intimidated. 
One  Saturday,  before  the  ‘‘blessed  Easter,”  he  came 
back  from  a  long  debauch,  ragged  and  filthy,  but  in  a 
state  of  lachrymose  repentance.  The  poor  wife  received 
him  as  a  returned  prodigal,  believed  that  his  remorse 
would  prove  lasting,  and  felt  sure  that  if  she  and  the 
children  went  to  church  with  him  on  Easter  Sunday  and 
he  could  be  induced  to  take  the  pledge  before  the  priest, 
all  their  troubles  would  be  ended.  After  hours  of 
vigorous  effort  and  the  expenditure  of  all  her  savings,  he 
finally  sat  on  the  front  doorstep  the  morning  of  Easter 
Sunday,  bathed,  shaved,  and  arrayed  in  a  fine  new  suit 
of  clothes.  She  left  him  sitting  there  in  the  reluctant 
spring  sunshine  while  she  finished  washing  and  dressing 
the  children.  When  she  finally  opened  the  front  door 
with  the  three  shining  children  that  they  might  all  set 
forth  together,  the  returned  prodigal  had  disappeared, 
and  was  not  seen  again  until  midnight,  when  he  came 
back  in  a  glorious  state  of  intoxication  from  the  pro- 


i 


1 56  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ceeds  of  his  pawned  clothes  and  clad  once  more  in  the 
dingiest  attire.  She  took  him  in  without  comment,  only 
J  to  begin  again  the  wretched  cycle.  There  were  of  course 
instances  of  the  criminal  husband  as  well  as  of  the  mere- 
5  ly  vicious.  I  recall  one  woman  who,  during  seven  years, 
never  missed  a  visiting  day  at  the  penitentiary  when 
she  might  see  her  husband,  and  whose  little  children  in 
the  nursery  proudly  reported  the  messages  from  father 
with  no  notion  that  he  was  in  disgrace,  so  absolutely 

1  o  did  they  reflect  the  gallant  spirit  of  their  mother. 

J  While  one  was  filled  with  admiration  for  these  heroic 

• 

women,  something  was  also  to  be  said  for  some  of  the 
husbands,  for  the  sorry  men  who,  for  one  reason  or  an¬ 
other,  had  failed  in  the  struggle  of  life.  Sometimes  this 
1 5  failure  was  purely  economic  and  the  men  were  com¬ 
petent  to  give  the  children,  whom  they  were  not  able 
to  support,  the  care  and  guidance  and  even  education 
which  were  of  the  highest  value.  Only  a  few  months 
ago  I  met  upon  the  street  one  of  the  early  nursery 
20  mothers  who  for  five  years  had  been  living  in  another 
part  of  the  city,  and  in  response  to  my  query  as  to  the 
welfare  of  her  five  children,  she  bitterly  replied,  “All  of 
them  except  Mary  have  been  arrested  at  one  time  or 
another,  thank  you.”  In  reply  to  my  remark  that  I 

2  s  thought  her  husband  had  always  had  such  admirable 

control  over  them,  she  burst  out,  “That  has  been  the 
whole  trouble.  I  got  tired  taking  care  of  him  and  didn’t 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


i57 


believe  that  his  laziness  was  all  due  to  his  health,  as  he 
said,  so  I  left  him  and  said  that  I  would  support  the 
children,  but  not  him.  From  that  minute  the  trouble 
with  the  four  boys  began.  I  never  knew  what  they  were 
doing,  and  after  every  sort  of  a  scrape  I  finally  put  Jack 
and  the  twins  into  institutions  where  I  pay  for  them. 
Joe  has  gone  to  work  at  last,  but  with  a  disgraceful 
record  behind  him.  I  tell  you  I  ain’t  so  sure  that  be¬ 
cause  a  woman  can  make  big  money  that  she  can  be 
both  father  and  mother  to  her  children.” 

As  I  walked  on,  I  could  but  wonder  in  which  particu¬ 
lar  we  are  most  stupid,  —  to  judge  a  man’s  worth  so 
solely  by  his  wage-earning  capacity  that  a  good  wife 
feels  justified  in  leaving  him,  or  in  holding  fast  to  that 
wretched  delusion  that  a  woman  can  both  support  and 
nurture  her  children. 

One  of  the  most  piteous  revelations  of  the  futility  of 
the  latter  attempt  came  to  me  through  the  mother  of 
“Goosie,”  as  the  children  for  years  called  a  little  boy 
who,  because  he  was  brought  to  the  nursery  wrapped 
up  in  his  mother’s  shawl,  always  had  his  hair  filled  with 
the  down  and  small  feathers  from  the  feather  brush 
factory  where  she  worked.  One  March  morning, 
Goosie’s  mother  was  hanging  out  the  washing  on  a  shed 
roof  at  six  o’clock,  doing  it  thus  early  before  she  left  for 
the  factory.  Five-year-old  Goosie  was  trotting  at  her 
heels  handing  her  clothespins,  when  he  was  suddenly 


158  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

blown  off  the  roof  by  the  high  wind  into  the  alley  below. 
His  neck  was  broken  by  the  fall  and  as  he  lay  piteous 
and  limp  on  a  pile  of  frozen  refuse,  his  mother  cheerily 
called  him  to  “climb  up  again,”  so  confident  do  over- 
5  worked  mothers  become  that  their  children  cannot  get 
hurt.  After  the  funeral,  as  the  poor  mother  sat  in  the 
nursery  postponing  the  moment  when  she  must  go 
back  to  her  empty  rooms,  I  asked  her,  in  a  futile  effort 
to  be  of  comfort,  if  there  was  anything  more  we  could 
o  do  for  her.  The  overworked,  sorrow-stricken  woman 
looked  up  and  replied,  “If  you  could  give  me  my 
wages  for  to-morrow,  I  would  not  go  to  work  in  the 
factory  at  all.  I  would  like  to  stay  at  home  all  day  and 
hold  the  baby.  Goosie  was  always  asking  me  to  take 
5 him  and  I  never  had  any  time.”  This  statement  re¬ 
vealed  the  condition  of  many  nursery  mothers  who  are 
obliged  to  forego  the  joys  and  solaces  which  belong  to 
even  the  most  poverty-stricken.  The  long  hours  of 
factory  labor  necessary  for  earning  the  support  of  a 
o  child  leave  no  time  for  the  tender  care  and  caressing 
which  may  enrich  the  life  of  the  most  piteous  baby. 

With  all  of  the  efforts  made  by  modern  society  to 
nurture  and  educate  the  young,  how  stupid  it  is  to 
permit  the  mothers  of  young  children  to  spend  them- 
5  selves  in  the  coarser  work  of  the  world!  It  is  curiously 
inconsistent  that  with  the  emphasis  which  this  genera¬ 
tion  has  placed  upon  the  mother  and  upon  the  pro- 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


T59 


longation  of  infancy,  we  constantly  allow  the  waste  of 
this  most  precious  material.  I  cannot  recall  without 
indignation  a  recent  experience.  I  was  detained  late 
one  evening  in  an  office  building  by  a  prolonged  com¬ 
mittee  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Education.  As  I  came  5 
out  at  eleven  o’clock,  I  met  in  the  corridor  of  the  four¬ 
teenth  floor  a  woman  whom  I  knew,  on  her  knees 
scrubbing  the  marble  tiling.  As  she  straightened  up  to 
greet  me,  she  seemed  so  wet  from  her  feet  up  to  her 
chin  that  I  hastily  inquired  the  cause.  Her  reply  was  10 
that  she  left  home  at  five  o’clock  every  night  and  had 
no  opportunity  for  six  hours  to  nurse  her  baby.  Her  \i 
mother’s  milk  mingled  with  the  very  water  with  which 
she  scrubbed  the  floors  until  she  should  return  at  mid¬ 
night,  heated  and  exhausted,  to  feed  her  screaming  1 5 
child  with  what  remained  within  her  breasts. 

These  are  only  a  few  of  the  problems  connected  with 
the  lives  of  the  poorest  people  with  whom  the  residents 
in  a  Settlement  are  constantly  brought  in  contact. 

I  cannot  close  this  chapter  without  a  reference  to  that  20 
gallant  company  of  men  and  women  among  whom  my 
acquaintance  is  so  large,  who  are  fairly  indifferent  to 
starvation  itself  because  of  their  preoccupation  with 
higher  ends.  Among  them  are  visionaries  and  en¬ 
thusiasts,  unsuccessful  artists,  writers,  and  reformers.  25 
-  For  many  years  at  Hull-House,  we  knew  a  well-bred 
German  woman  who  was  completely  absorbed  in  the 


160  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


experiment  of  expressing  musical  phrases  and  melodies 
by  means  of  colors.  Because  she  was  small  and  de¬ 
formed,  she  stowed  herself  into  her  trunk  every  night, 
where  she  slept  on  a  canvas  stretched  hammock-wise 
s  from  the  four  corners  and  her  food  was  of  the  meagerest; 
nevertheless  if  a  visitor  left  an  offering  upon  her  table, 
it  was  largely  spent  for  apparatus  or  delicately  colored 
silk  floss,  with  which  to  pursue  the  fascinating  experi¬ 
ment.  Another  sadly  crippled  old  woman,  the  widow 
oof  a  sea  captain,  although  living  almost  exclusively 
upon  malted  milk  tablets  as  affording  a  cheap  form  of 
prepared  food,  was  always  eager  to  talk  of  the  beautiful 
illuminated  manuscripts  she  had  sought  out  in  her 
travels  and  to  show  specimens  of  her  own  work  as  an 
5  illuminator.  Still  another  of  these  impressive  old 
women  was  an  inveterate  inventor.  Although  she  had 
seen  prosperous  days  in  England,  when  we  knew  her, 
she  subsisted  largely  upon  the  samples  given  away  at 
the  demonstration  counters  of  the  department  stores, 
o  and  on  bits  of  food  which  she  cooked  on  a  coal  shovel  in 
the  furnace  of  the  apartment  house  whose  basement 
back  room  she  occupied.  Although  her  inventions  were 
not  practicable,  various  experts  to  whom  they  were 
submitted  always  pronounced  them  suggestive  and 
5  ingenious.  I  once  saw  her  receive  this  complimentary 
verdict  —  “this  ribbon  to  stick  in  her  coat’’°  —  with 
such  dignity  and  gravity,  that  the  words  of  condolence 
for  her  financial  disappointment,  died  upon  my  lips. 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY 


161 


These  indomitable  souls  are  but  three  out  of  many, 
whom  I  might  instance  to  prove  that  those  who  are 
handicapped  in  the  race  for  life’s  goods,  sometimes  play 
a  magnificent  trick  upon  the  jade,  life  herself,  by  ceasing 
to  know  whether  or  not  they  possess  any  of  her  tawdry 
goods  and  chattels. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A  Decade  of  Economic  Discussion 

The  Hull-House  residents  were  often  bewildered  by 
the  desire  for  constant  discussion  which  characterized 
Chicago  twenty  years  ago,  for  although  the  residents 
in  the  early  Settlements  were  in  many  cases  young 
5  persons,  who  had  sought  relief  from  the  consciousness 
of  social  maladjustment  in  the  “anodyne  of  work” 
afforded  by  philanthropic  and  civic  activities,  their 
former  experiences  had  not  thrown  them  into  company 
with  radicals.  The  decade  between  1890-1900  was,  in 

10  Chicago,  a  period  of  propaganda  as  over  against  con¬ 
structive  social  effort;  the  moment  for  marching  and 
carrying  banners,  for  stating  general  principles  and 
making  a  demonstration,  rather  than  the  time  for  un¬ 
covering  the  situation  and  for  providing  the  legal  meas- 

1  s  ures  and  the  civic  organization  through  which  new 

social  hopes  might  make  themselves  felt. 

When  Hull-House  was  established  in  1889,  the  events 
of  the  Haymarket  riot°  were  already  two  years  old,  but 
during  that  time  Chicago  had  apparently  gone  through 

2  o  the  first  period  of  repressive  measures,  and  in  the  winter 

of  1889-1890,  by  the  advice  and  with  the  active  partici¬ 
pation  of  its  leading  citizens,  the  city  had  reached  the 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


163 


conclusion  that  the  only  cure  for  the  acts  of  anarchy  was 
free  speech  and  an  open  discussion  of  the  ills  of  which 
the  opponents  of  government  complained.  Great  open 
meetings  were  held  every  Sunday  evening  in  the  recital 
hall  of  the  then  new  auditorium,  presided  over  by  such  5 
representative  citizens  as  Lyman  Gage,°  and  every 
possible  shade  of  opinion  was  freely  expressed.  A  man 
who  spoke  constantly  at  these  meetings  used  to  be 
pointed  out  to  the  visiting  stranger  as  one  who  had  been 
involved  with  the  group  of  convicted  anarchists,  and  10 
who  doubtless  would  have  been  arrested  and  tried,  but 
for  the  accident  of  his  having  been  in  Milwaukee  when 
the  explosion  occurred.  One  cannot  imagine  such  meet¬ 
ings  being  held  in  Chicago  to-day,  nor  that  such  a  man 
should  be  encouraged  to  raise  his  voice  in  a  public  as-  1 5 
semblage  presided  over  by  a  leading  banker.  It  is  hard 
to  tell  just  what  change  has  come  over  our  philosophy 
or  over  the  minds  of  those  citizens  who  were  then  con¬ 
vinced  that  if  these  conferences  had  been  established 
earlier,  the  Haymarket  riot  and  all  its  sensational  re-  20 
suits  might  have  been  avoided. 

At  any  rate,  there  seemed  a  further  need  for  smaller 
clubs,  where  men  who  differed  widely  in  their  social 
theories  might  meet  for  discussion,  where  representatives 
of  the  various  economic  schools  might  modify  each  2  5 
other,  and  at  least  learn  tolerance  and  the  futility  of 
endeavoring  to  convince  all  the  world  of  the  truth  of  one 
position.  Fanaticism  is  engendered  only  when  men. 


1 64  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

finding  no  contradiction  to  their  theories,  at  last  believe 
that  the  very  universe  lends  itself  as  an  exemplification 
of  one  point  of  view.  “The  Working  People’s  Social 
Science  Club”  was  organized  at  Hull-House  in  the 
s  spring  of  1890  by  an  English  workingman,  and  for 
seven  years  it  held  a  weekly  meeting.  At  eight  o’clock 
every  Wednesday  night  the  secretary  called  to  order 
from  forty  to  one  hundred  people;  a  chairman  for  the 
evening  was  elected,  a  speaker  was  introduced  who  was 
o allowed  to  talk  until  nine  o’clock;  his  subject  was  then 
thrown  open  to  discussion  and  a  lively  debate  ensued 
until  ten  o’clock,  at  which  hour  the  meeting  was  de¬ 
clared  adjourned.  The  enthusiasm  of  this  club  seldom 
lagged.  Its  zest  for  discussion  was  unceasing,  and  any 
s  attempt  to  turn  it  into  a  study  or  reading  club  always 
met  with  the  strong  disapprobation  of  the  members. 

In  these  weekly  discussions  in  the  Hull-House  draw¬ 
ing-room  everything  was  thrown  back  upon  general 
principles  and  all  discussion  save  that  which  “went  to 
othe  root  of  things,”  was  impatiently  discarded  as  an 
unworthy,  halfway  measure.  I  recall  one  evening  in 
this  club  when  an  exasperated  member  had  thrown  out 
the  statement  that  “Mr.  B.  believes  that  socialism  will 
cure  the  toothache.”  Mr.  B.  promptly  rose  to  his  feet 
5  and  said  that  it  certainly  would,  that  when  every  child’s 
teeth  were  systematically  cared  for  from  the  beginning, 
toothache  would  disappear  from  the  face  of  the  earth, 
belonging,  as  it  did,  to  the  extinct  competitive  order,  as 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


165 

the  black  plague  had  disappeared  from  the  earth  with 
the  ill-regulated  feudal  regime  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
“But,”  he  added,  “why  do  we  spend  time  discussing 
trifles  like  the  toothache  when  great  social  changes  are 
to  be  considered  which  will  of  themselves  reform  these  5 
minor  ills?”  Even  the  man  who  had  been  humorous, 
fell  into  the  solemn  tone  of  the  gathering.  It  was,  per¬ 
haps,  here  that  the  socialist  surpassed  every  one  else  in 
the  fervor  of  economic  discussion.  He  was  usually  a 
German  or  a  Russian  with  a  turn  for  logical  presenta-  10 
tion,  who  saw  in  the  concentration  of  capital  and  the 
growth  of  monopolies  an  inevitable  transition  to  the 
socialistic  state.  He  pointed  out  that  the  concentration 
of  capital  in  fewer  hands  but  increased  the  mass  of 
those  whose  interests  were  opposed  to  a  maintenance  1 5 
of  its  power,  and  vastly  simplified  its  final  absorption 
by  the  community;  that  monopoly  “when  it  is  finished 
doth  bring  forth  socialism.”  Opposite  to  him,  springing 
up  in  every  discussion  was  the  individualist,  or,  as  the 
socialist  called  him,  the  anarchist,  who  insisted  that  we  20 
shall  never  secure  just  human  relations  until  we  have 
equality  of  opportunity;  that  the  sole  function  of  the 
state  is  to  maintain  the  freedom  of  each,  guarded  by  the 
like  freedom  of  all,  in  order  that  each  man  may  be  able 
to  work  out  the  problems  of  his  own  existence.  2  5 

That  first  winter  was  within  three  years  of  the  Henry 
George0  campaign  in  New  York,  when  his  adherents  all 
over  the  country  were  carrying  on  a  successful  and 


1 66  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


effective  propaganda.  When  Henry  George  himself 
came  to  Hull-House  one  Sunday  afternoon,  the  gymna¬ 
sium,  which  was  already  crowded  with  men  to  hear 
Father  Huntington’s0  address  on  “Why  should  a  free 
5  thinker  believe  in  Christ,”  fairly  rocked  on  its  founda¬ 
tions  under  the  enthusiastic  and  prolonged  applause 
which  greeted  this  great  leader  and  constantly  inter¬ 
rupted  his  stirring  address,  filled,  as  all  of  his  speeches 
were,  with  high  moral  enthusiasm  and  humanitarian 
i  o  fervor.  Of  the  remarkable  congresses  held  in  connection 
with  the  World’s  Fair,  perhaps  those  inaugurated  by 
the  advocates  of  single  tax  exceeded  all  others  in  vital 
enthusiasm.  It  was  possibly  significant  that  all  dis¬ 
cussions  in  the  department  of  social  science  had  to  be 

1  s  organized  by  partisans  in  separate  groups.  The  very 

committee  itself  on  social  science,  composed  of  Chicago 
citizens,  of  whom  I  was  one,  changed  from  week  to 
week,  as  partisan  members  had  their  feelings  hurt  be¬ 
cause  their  causes  did  not  receive  “due  recognition.” 
20  And  yet  in  the  same  building  adherents  of  the  most 
diverse  religious  creeds,  eastern  and  western,  met  in 
amity  and  good  fellowship.  Did  it  perhaps  indicate 
that  their  presentation  of  the  eternal  problems  of  life 
were  cast  in  an  older  and  less  sensitive  mold  than  this 

2  5  presentation  in  terms  of  social  experience,  or  was  it 
(  rather  that  the  new  social  science  was  not  yet  a  science 

at  all  but  merely  a  name  under  cover  of  which  we  might 
discuss  the  perplexing  problems  of  the  industrial  situa- 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


167 

tion  ?  Certainly  the  difficulties  of  our  committee  were 
not  minimized  by  the  fact  that  the  then  new  science  of 
sociology  had  not  yet  defined  its  own  field.  The 
University  of  Chicago,  opened  only  the  year  before  the 
World’s  Fair,  was  the  first  great  institution  of  learning  5 
to  institute  a  department  of  sociology. 

In  the  meantime  the  Hull-House  Social  Science  Club 
grew  in  numbers  and  fervor  as  various  distinguished 
people  who  were  visiting  the  World’s  Fair  came  to  ad¬ 
dress  it.  I  recall  a  brilliant  Frenchwoman  who  was  10 
filled  with  amazement  because  one  of  the  shabbiest  men 
reflected  a  reading  of  Schopenhauer.0  She  considered 
the  statement  of  another  member  most  remarkable  — 
that  when  he  saw  a  carriage  driving  through  the  streets 
occupied  by  a  capitalist  who  was  no  longer  even  an  1 5 
entrepreneur,  he  felt  quite  as  sure  that  his  days  were 
numbered  and  that  his  very  lack  of  function  to  society 
would  speedily  bring  him  to  extinction,  as  he  did  when 
he  saw  a  drunkard  reeling  along  the  same  street. 

The  club  at  any  rate  convinced  the  residents  that  no  20 
one  so  poignantly  realizes  the  failures  in  the  social 
structure  as  the  man  at  the  bottom,  who  has  been  most 
directly  in  contact  with  those  failures  and  has  suffered 
most.  I  recall  the  shrewd  comments  of  a  certain  sailor 
who  had  known  the  disinherited  in  every  country;  of  a  25 
Russian  who  had  served  his  term  in  Siberia;  of  an  old 
Irishman  who  called  himself  an  atheist  but  who  in 
moments  of  excitement  always  blamed  the  good  Lord 


168  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


for  “ setting  supinely”  when  the  world  was  so  horribly 
out  of  joint. 

It  was  doubtless  owing  largely  to  this  club  that  Hull- 
House  contracted  its  early  reputation  for  radicalism. 
5  Visitors  refused  to  distinguish  between  the  sentiments 
expressed  by  its  members  in  the  heat  of  discussion  and 
the  opinions  held  by  the  residents  themselves.  At  that 
moment  in  Chicago  the  radical  of  every  shade  of 
opinion  was  vigorous  and  dogmatic;  of  the  sort  that 
o  could  not  resign  himself  to  the  slow  march  of  human 
improvement;  of  the  type  who  knew  exactly  “in  what 
part  of  the  world  Utopia0  standeth.” 

During  this  decade  Chicago  seemed  divided  into  two 
classes;  those  who  held  that  “business  is  business”  and 
5  who  were  therefore  annoyed  at  the  very  notion  of  social 
control,  and  the  radicals,  who  claimed  that  nothing 
could  be  done  to  really  moralize  the  industrial  situation 
until  society  should  be  reorganized. 

A  Settlement  is  above  all  a  place  for  enthusiasms,  a 
o  spot  to  which  those  who  have  a  passion  for  the  equaliza¬ 
tion  of  human  joys  and  opportunities  are  early  at¬ 
tracted.  It  is  this  type  of  mind  which  is  in  itself  so 
often  obnoxious  to  the  man  of  conquering  business 
faculty,  to  whom  the  practical  world  of  affairs  seems  so 
s  supremely  rational  that  he  would  never  vote  to  change 
the  type  of  it  even  if  he  could.  The  man  of  social 
enthusiasm  is  to  him  an  annoyance  and  an  affront.  He 
does  not  like  to  hear  him  talk  and  considers  him  per  se 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


4 


169 

“unsafe.”  Such  a  business  man  would  admit,  as  an 
abstract  proposition,  that  society  is  susceptible  of 
modification  and  would  even  agree  that  all  human 
institutions  imply  progressive  development,  but  at  the 
same  time  he  deeply  distrusts  those  who  seek  to  reform  5 
existing  conditions.  There  is  a  certain  common-sense 
foundation  for  this  distrust,  for  too  often  the  reformer  \/ 
is  the  rebel  who  defies  things  as  they  are,  because  of  the 

(restraints  which  they  impose  upon  his  individual  desires 
rather  than  because  of  the  general  defects  of  the  system.  1  o 
When  such  a  rebel  poses  for  a  reformer,  his  short¬ 
comings  are  heralded  to  the  world,  and  his  downfall  is 
cherished  as  an  awful  warning  to  those  who  refuse  to 
worship  “the  god  of  things  as  they  are.” 

And  yet  as  I  recall  the  members  of  this  early  club,  1 5 
even  those  who  talked  the  most  and  the  least  rationally 
seem  to  me  to  have  been  particularly  kindly  and  “  safe.  ” 
The  most  pronounced  anarchist  among  them  has  long 
since  become  a  convert  to  a  religious  sect,  holding 
Buddhistic0  tenets  which  imply  little  food  and  a  distrust  20 
of  all  action;  he  has  become  a  wraith  of  his  former  self 
but  he  still  retains  his  kindly  smile. 

In  the  discussion  of  these  themes,  Hull-House  was  of 
course  quite  as  much  under  the  suspicion  of  one  side  as 
the  other.  I  remember  one  night  when  I  addressed  a  2  5 
I  club  of  secularists,  which  met  at  the  corner  of  South 
I  Halsted  and  Madison  streets,  a  rough  looking  man 
j  called  out:  “You  are  all  right  now,  but,  mark  my 


1 


i yo  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

words,  when  you  are  subsidized  by  the  millionaires,  you 
will  be  afraid  to  talk  like  this.”  The  defense  of  free 
speech  was  a  sensitive  point  with  me,  and  I  quickly  re¬ 
plied  that  while  I  did  not  intend  to  be  subsidized  by 
s  millionaires,  neither  did  I  propose  to  be  bullied  by 
workingmen,  and  that  I  should  state  my  honest  opinion 
without  consulting  either  of  them.  To  my  surprise,  the 
audience  of  radicals  broke  into  applause,  and  the  dis¬ 
cussion  turned  upon  the  need  of  resisting  tyranny 
io  wherever  found,  if  democratic  institutions  were  to 
endure.  This  desire  to  bear  independent  witness  to 
social  righteousness  often  resulted  in  a  sense  of  com¬ 
promise  difficult  to  endure,  and  at  many  times  it  seemed 
to  me  that  we  were  destined  to  alienate  everybody.  I 
i  s  should  have  been  most  grateful  at  that  time  to  accept 
the  tenets  of  socialism,  and  I  conscientiously  made  my 
effort,  both  by  reading  and  by  many  discussions  with 
the  comrades.  I  found  that  I  could  easily  give  an 
affirmative  answer  to  the  heated  question,  “Don’t  you 
20  see  that  just  as  the  hand  mill  created  a  society  with  a 
feudal  lord,  so  the  steam  mill  creates  a  society  with  an 
industrial  capitalist?”  But  it  was  a  little  harder  to  give 
an  affirmative  reply  to  the  proposition  that  the  social 
relation  thus  established  proceeds  to  create  principles, 
25  ideas,  and  categories  as  merely  historical  and  transitory 
products. 

Of  course  I  use  the  term  “socialism”  technically  and 
do  not  wish  to  confuse  it  with  the  growing  sensitiveness 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


171 


which  recognizes  that  no  personal  comfort  nor  in¬ 
dividual  development  can  compensate  a  man  for  the 
misery  of  his  neighbors,  nor  with  the  increasing  con¬ 
viction  that  social  arrangements  can  be  transformed 
through  man’s  conscious  and  deliberate  effort.  Such  a  5 
definition  would  not  have  been  accepted  for  a  moment 
by  the  Russians,  who  then  dominated  the  socialist  party 
in  Chicago  and  among  whom  a  crude  interpretation  of 
the  class  conflict  was  the  test  of  the  faith. 

During  those  first  years  on  Halsted  Street  nothing  10 
was  more  painfully  clear  than  the  fact  that  pliable 
human  nature  is  relentlessly  pressed  upon  by  its  physi¬ 
cal  environment.  I  saw  nowhere  a  more  devoted  effort 
to  understand  and  relieve  that  heavy  pressure  than  the 
socialists  were  making,  and  I  should  have  been  glad  to  15 
have  had  the  comradeship  of  that  gallant  company  had 
they  not  firmly  insisted  that  fellowship  depends  upon 
identity  of  creed.  They  repudiated  similarity  of  aim 
and  social  sympathy  as  tests  which  were  much  too 
loose  and  wavering  as  they  did  that  vague  socialism  20 
which  for  thousands  has  come  to  be  a  philosophy,  or 
rather  religion,  embodying  the  hope  of  the  world  and  the 
protection  of  all  who  suffer. 

I  also  longed  for  the  comfort  of  a  definite  social  creed, 
which  should  afford  at  one  and  the  same  time  an  ex-  25 
planation  of  the  social  chaos  and  the  logical  steps 
towards  its  better  ordering.  I  came  to  have  an  exag¬ 
gerated  sense  of  responsibility  for  the  poverty  in  the 


I72  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

midst  of  which  I  was  living  and  which  the  socialists 
constantly  forced  me  to  defend.  My  plight  was  not  un¬ 
like  that  which  might  have  resulted  in  my  old  days  of 
skepticism  regarding  foreordination,  had  I  then  been 
5  compelled  to  defend  the  confusion  arising  from  the 
clashing  of  free  wills  as  an  alternative  to  an  acceptance 
of  the  doctrine.  Another  difficulty  in  the  way  of  accept¬ 
ing  this  economic  determinism,  so  baldly  dependent 
upon  the  theory  of  class  consciousness,  constantly  arose 
owhen  I  lectured  in  country  towns  and  there  had  op¬ 
portunities  to  read  human  documents  of  prosperous 
people  as  well  as  those  of  my  neighbors  who  were 
crowded  into  the  city.  The  former  were  stoutly  un¬ 
conscious  of  any  classes  in  America,  and  the  class  con- 
s  sciousness  of  the  immigrants  was  fast  being  broken  into 
by  the  necessity  for  making  new  and  unprecedented 
connections  in  the  industrial  life  all  about  them. 

In  the  meantime,  although  many  men  of  many  minds 
met  constantly  at  our  conferences,  it  was  amazing  to 
ofind  the  incorrigible  good  nature  which  prevailed. 
Radicals  are  accustomed  to  hot  discussion  and  sharp 
differences  of  opinion  and  take  it  all  in  the  day’s  work. 

I  recall  that  the  secretary  of  the  Hull-House  Social 
Science  Club  at  the  anniversary  of  the  seventh  year  of 
5  its  existence  read  a  report  in  which  he  stated  that,  so 
far  as  he  could  remember,  but  twice  during  that  time 
had  a  speaker  lost  his  temper,  and  in  each  case  it  had 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


i73 


been  a  college  professor  who  “wasn’t  accustomed  to 
being  talked  back  to.” 

He  also  added  that  but  once  had  all  the  club  members 
united  in  applauding  the  same  speaker;  only  Samuel 
Jones,  who  afterwards  became  “the  golden  rule” 
mayor  of  Toledo,  had  been  able  to  overcome  all  their 
dogmatic  differences,  when  he  had  set  forth  a  plan  of 
endowing  a  group  of  workingmen  with  a  factory  plant 
and  a  working  capital  for  experimentation  in  hours  and 
wages,  quite  as  groups  of  scholars  are  endowed  for 
research. 

Chicago  continued  to  devote  much  time  to  economic 
discussion  and  remained  in  a  state  of  youthful  glamour 
throughout  the  nineties.  I  recall  a  young  Methodist 
minister  who,  in  order  to  free  his  denomination  from 

I  any  entanglement  in  his  discussion  of  the  economic  and 
social  situation,  moved  from  his  church  building  into  a 
neighboring  hall.  The  congregation  and  many  other 
people  followed  him  there,  and  he  later  took  to  the  street 
corners  because  he  found  that  the  shabbiest  men  liked 
that  the  best.  Professor  Herron0  filled  to  overflowing  a 
downtown  hall  every  noon  with  a  series  of  talks  en¬ 
titled  “Between  Caesar  and  Jesus”  —  an  attempt  to 
apply  the  teachings  of  the  Gospel  to  the  situations  of 
modern  commerce.  A  half  dozen  publications  edited 
with  some  ability  and  much  moral  enthusiasm  have 
passed  away,  perhaps  because  they  represented 
r.  * 


174  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

pamphleteering  rather  than  journalism  and  came  to  a 
natural  end  when  the  situation  changed.  Certainly 
their  editors  suffered  criticism  and  poverty  on  behalf 
of  the  causes  which  they  represented. 

5  Trades-unionists,  unless  they  were  also  socialists,  were 
not  prominent  in  those  economic  discussions,  although 
they  were  steadily  making  an  effort  to  bring  order  into 
the  unnecessary  industrial  confusion.  They  belonged 
to  the  second  of  the  two  classes  into  which  Mill  divides 
o  all  those  who  are  dissatisfied  with  human  life  as  it  is, 
and  whose  feelings  are  wholly  identified  with  its  radical 
amendment.  He  states  that  the  thoughts  of  one  class 
are  in  the  region  of  ultimate  aims,  of  “the  highest  ideals 
of  human  life,”  while  the  thoughts  of  the  other  are  in 
sthe  region  of  the  “immediately  useful  and  practically 
attainable.” 

The  meetings  of  our  Social  Science  Club  were  carried 
on  by  men  of  the  former  class,  many  of  them  with  a 
strong  religious  bias,  who  constantly  challenged  the 
o  Church  to  assuage  the  human  spirit  thus  torn  and 
bruised  “in  the  tumult  of  a  time  disconsolate.”  These 
men  were  so  serious  in  their  demand  for  religious  fellow¬ 
ship,  and  several  young  clergymen  were  so  ready  to 
respond  to  the  appeal,  that  various  meetings  were  ar- 
s  ranged  at  Hull-House,  in  which  a  group  of  people  met 
together  to  consider  the  social  question,  not  in  a  spirit 
of  discussion,  but  in  prayer  and  meditation.  These 
clergymen  were  making  heroic  efforts  to  induce  their 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


i75 

churches  to  formally  consider  the  labor  situation,  and 
during  the  years  which  have  elapsed  since  then,  many 
denominations  of  the  Christian  Church  have  organized 
labor  committees;  but  at  that  time  there  was  nothing 
of  the  sort  beyond  the  society  in  the  established  Church 
of  England  “to  consider  the  conditions  of  labor.” 

During  that  decade  even  the  most  devoted  of  that 
pioneer  church  society  failed  to  formulate  the  fervid  de¬ 
sire  for  juster  social  conditions  into  anything  more  con¬ 
vincing  than  a  literary  statement,  and  the  Christian 
Socialists,  at  least  when  the  American  branch  held  its 
annual  meeting  at  Hull-House,  afforded  but  a  striking 
portrayal  of  that  “  betweenage  mood”  in  which  so  many 
of  our  religious  contemporaries  are  forced  to  live.  I 
remember  that  I  received  the  same  impression  when  I 
attended  a  meeting  called  by  the  canon  of  an  English 
cathedral  to  discuss  the  relation  of  the  Church  to  labor. 
The  men  quickly  indicted  the  cathedral  for  its  useless¬ 
ness,  and  the  canon  asked  them  what  in  their  minds 
should  be  its  future.  The  men  promptly  replied  that 
any  new  social  order  would  wish,  of  course,  to  preserve 
beautiful  historic  buildings,  that  although  they  would 
dismiss  the  bishop  and  all  the  clergy,  they  would  want 
to  retain  one  or  two  scholars  as  custodians  and  inter¬ 
preters.  “And  what  next?”  the  imperturbable  ec¬ 
clesiastic  asked.  “We  would  democratize  it,”  replied 
the  men.  But  when  it  came  to  a  more  detailed  descrip¬ 
tion  of  such  an  undertaking,  the  discussion  broke  into 


1 76  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

a  dozen  bits,  although  illuminated  by  much  shrewd 
wisdom  and  affording  a  clew,  perhaps  as  to  the  destruc¬ 
tion  of  the  bishop’s  palace  by  the  citizens  of  this  same 
town,  who  had  attacked  it  as  a  symbol  of  swollen 
s  prosperity  during  the  bread  riots  of  the  earlier  part  of 
the  century. 

On  the  other  hand  the  workingmen  who  continue  to 
demand  help  from  the  Church  thereby  acknowledge 
their  kinship,  as  does  the  son  who  continues  to  ask 
o  bread  from  the  father  who  gives  him  a  stone.  I  recall 
an  incident  connected  with  a  prolonged  strike  in  Chicago 
on  the  part  of  the  typographical  unions  for  an  eight- 
hour  day.  The  strike  had  been  conducted  in  a  most 
orderly  manner  and  the  union  men,  convinced  of  the 
5  justice  of  their  cause,  had  felt  aggrieved  because  one  of 
the  religious  publishing  houses  in  Chicago  had  con¬ 
stantly  opposed  them.  Some  of  the  younger  clergymen 
of  the  denominations  who  were  friendly  to  the  strikers’ 
cause  came  to  a  luncheon  at  Hull-House,  where  the 
o  situation  was  discussed  by  the  representatives  of  all 
sides.  The  clergymen,  becoming  much  interested  in  the 
idealism  with  which  an  officer  of  the  State  Federation 
of  Labor  presented  the  cause,  drew  from  him  the  story 
of  his  search  for  fraternal  relation:  he  said  that  at 
5  fourteen  years  of  age  he  had  joined  a  church,  hoping  to 
find  it  there;  he  had  later  become  a  member  of  many 
fraternal  organizations  and  mutual  benefit  societies, 
and,  although  much  impressed  by  their  rituals,  he  was 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


177 


disappointed  in  the  actual  fraternity.  He  had  finally 
found,  so  it  seemed  to  him,  in  the  cause  of  organized 
labor,  what  these  other  organizations  had  failed  to  give 
him  —  an  opportunity  for  sacrificial  effort 

Chicago  thus  took  a  decade  to  discuss  the  problems  s 
inherent  in  the  present  industrial  organization  and  to 
consider  what  might  be  done,  not  so  much  against  de¬ 
liberate  aggression  as  against  brutal  confusion  and 
neglect;  quite  as  the  youth  of  promise  passes  through  a 
mist  of  rose-colored  hope  before  he  settles  in  the  land  ic 
of  achievement  where  he  becomes  all  too  dull  and  literal 
minded.  And  yet  as  I  hastily  review  the  decade  in 
Chicago  which  followed  this  one  given  over  to  dis¬ 
cussion,  the  actual  attainment  of  these  early  hopes,  so 
far  as  they  have  been  realized  at  all,  seems  to  have  come  1  5 
from  men  of  affairs  rather  than  from  those  given  to 
speculation.  Was  the  whole  decade  of  discussion  an 
illustration  of  that  striking  fact  which  has  been  likened 
to  the  changing  of  swords  in  Hamlet:  that  the  abstract 
minds  at  length  yield  to  the  inevitable  or  at  least  grow  20 
less  ardent  in  their  propaganda,  while  the  concrete 
minds,  dealing  constantly  with  daily  affairs,  in  the  end 
demonstrate  the  reality  of  abstract  notions? 

I  remember  when  Frederic  Harrison  visited  Hull- 
House  that  I  was  much  disappointed  to  find  that  the  25 
Positivists  had  not  made  their  ardor  for  humanity  a 
more  potent  factor  in  the  English  social  movement,  as  I 
was  surprised  during  a  visit  from  John  Morley0  to  find 


1 78  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  he,  representing  perhaps  the  type  of  man  whom 
political  life  seemed  to  have  pulled  away  from  the 
ideals  of  his  youth,  had  yet  been  such  a  champion  of 
democracy  in  the  full  tide  of  reaction.  My  observations 
s  were  much  too  superficial  to  be  of  value  and  certainly 
both  men  were  well  grounded  in  philosophy  and  theory 
of  social  reform  and  had  long  before  carefully  formulated 
their  principles,  as  the  new  English  Labor  Party,  which 
is  destined  to  break  up  the  reactionary  period,  is  now 
10  being  created  by  another  set  of  theorists.  There  were 
certainly  moments  during  the  heated  discussions  of  this 
decade  when  nothing  seemed  so  important  as  right 
theory:  this  was  borne  in  upon  me  one  brilliant  evening 
at  Hull-House  when  Benjamin  Kidd,°  author  of  the 
1 5  much  read  “  Social  Evolution,”  was  pitted  against 
Victor  Berger0  of  Milwaukee,  even  then  considered  a 
rising  man  in  the  Socialist  Party. 

At  any  rate  the  residents  at  Hull-House  discovered 
that  while  their  first  impact  with  city  poverty  allied 
20  them  to  groups  given  over  to  discussion  of  social 
theories,  their  sober  efforts  to  heal  neighborhood  ills 
allied  them  to  general  public  movements  which  were 
without  challenging  creeds.  But  while  we  discovered 
that  we  most  easily  secured  the  smallest  of  much  needed  ' 
2  5  improvements  by  attaching  our  efforts  to  those  of 
organized  bodies,  nevertheless  these  very  organizations 
would  have  been  impossible,  had  not  the  public  con- 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


179 

science  been  aroused  and  the  community  sensibility 
quickened  by  these  same  ardent  theorists. 

As  I  review  these  very  first  impressions  of  the  workers 
in  unskilled  industries,  living  in  a  depressed  quarter  of 
the  city,  I  realize  how  easy  it  was  for  us  to  see  ex-  5 
ceptional  cases  of  hardship  as  typical  of  the  average 
lot,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  alleviating  philanthropy  and 
labor  legislation,  the  indictment  of  Tolstoy  applied  to 
Moscow  thirty  years  ago  still  fits  every  American  city: 
“Wherever  we  may  live,  if  we  draw  a  circle  around  us  10 
of  a  hundred  thousand,  or  a  thousand,  or  even  of  ten 
miles  circumference,  and  look  at  the  lives  of  those  men 
and  women  who  are  inside  our  circle,  we  shall  find  half- 
starved  children,  old  people,  pregnant  women,  sick  and 
weak  persons,  working  beyond  their  strength,  who  have  1 5 
neither  food  nor  rest  enough  to  support  them,  and  who, 
for  this  reason,  die  before  their  time;  we  shall  see  others, 
full-grown,  who  are  injured  and  needlessly  killed  by 
dangerous  and  hurtful  tasks.” 

As  the  American  city  is  awakening  to  self-con-  20 
sciousness,  it  slowly  perceives  the  civic  significance  of 
these  industrial  conditions,  and  perhaps  Chicago  has 
been  foremost  in  the  effort  to  connect  the  unregulated 
overgrowth  of  the  huge  centers  of  population,  with  the 
astonishingly  rapid  development  of  industrial  enter-  25 
prises;  quite  as  Chicago  was  foremost  to  carry  on  the 
preliminary  discussion  through  which  a  basis  was  laid 


180  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


for  like-mindedness  and  the  coordination  of  divers  wills. 
I  remember  an  astute  English  visitor,  who  had  been  a 
guest  in  a  score  of  American  cities,  observed  that  it  was 
hard  to  understand  the  local  pride  he  constantly  en- 
s  countered;  for  in  spite  of  the  boasting  on  the  part  of 
leading  citizens  in  the  western,  eastern,  and  southern 
towns,  all  American  cities  seemed  to  him  essentially 
alike  and  all  equally  the  results  of  an  industry  totally 
unregulated  by  well-considered  legislation, 
io  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  perhaps  all  this  general 
discussion  was  inevitable  in  connection  with  the  early 
Settlements,  as  they  in  turn  were  the  inevitable  result 
of  theories  of  social  reform,  which  in  their  full  en¬ 
thusiasm  reached  America  by  way  of  England,  only  in 
1 5  the  last  decade  of  the  century.  There  must  have  been 
tough  fiber  somewhere;  for,  although  the  residents  of 
Hull-House  were  often  baffled  by  the  radicalism  within 
the  Social  Science  Club  and  harassed  by  the  criticism 
from  outside,  we  still  continued  to  believe  that  such 
20  discussion  should  be  carried  on,  for  if  the  Settlement 
seeks  its  expression  through  social  activity,  it  must 
learn  the  difference  between  mere  social  unrest  and 
spiritual  impulse. 

The  group  of  Hull-House  residents,  which  by  the  end 
2  s  of  the  decade  comprised  twenty-five,  differed  widely  in 
social  beliefs,  from  the  girl  direct  from  the  country  who 
looked  upon  all  social  unrest  as  mere  anarchy,  to  the 
resident,  who  had  become  a  socialist  when  a  student  in 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


181 


Zurich,  and  who  had  long  before  translated  from  the 
German  Engels’s0  “Conditions  of  the  Working  Class  in 
England,”  although  at  this  time  she  had  been  read  out 
of  the  Socialist  Party  because  the  Russian  and  German 
Impossibilists  suspected  her  fluent  English,  as  she 
always  lightly  explained.  Although  thus  diversified  in 
social  beliefs,  the  residents  became  solidly  united  through 
our  mutual  experience  in  an  industrial  quarter,  and  we 
became  not  only  convinced  of  the  need  for  social  con¬ 
trol  and  protective  legislation  but  also  of  the  value  of 
this  preliminary  argument. 

This  decade  of  discussion  between  1890  and  1900 
already  seems  remote  from  the  spirit  of  Chicago  of 
to-day.  So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  reproduce  this 
earlier  period,  it  must  reflect  the  essential  provisionality 
of  everything;  “the  perpetual  moving  on  to  something 
future  which  shall  supersede  the  present,”  that  para¬ 
mount  impression  of  life  itself,  which  affords  us,  at  one 
and  the  same  time,  ground  for  despair  and  for  endless 
and  varied  anticipation. 


CHAPTER  X 

Pioneer  Labor  Legislation  in  Illinois 

Our  very  first  Christmas  at  Hull-House,  when  we  as 
yet  knew  nothing  of  child  labor,  a  number  of  little  girls 
refused  the  candy  which  was  offered  them  as  part  of 
the  Christmas  good  cheer,  saying  simply  that  they 
5  “worked  in  a  candy  factory  and  could  not  bear  the 
sight  of  it.”  We  discovered  that  for  six  weeks  they 
had  worked  from  seven  in  the  morning  until  nine  at 
night,  and  they  were  exhausted  as  well  as  satiated. 
The  sharp  consciousness  of  stern  economic  conditions 
iowas  thus  thrust  upon  us  in  the  midst  of  the  season  of 
good  will. 

During  the  same  winter  three  boys  from  a  Hull- 
House  club  were  injured  at  one  machine  in  a  neigh¬ 
boring  factory  for  lack  of  a  guard  which  would  have 
i  s  cost  but  a  few  dollars.  When  the  injury  of  one  of  these 
boys  resulted  in  his  death,  we  felt  quite  sure  that  the 
owners  of  the  factory  would  share  our  horror  and  re¬ 
morse,  and  that  they  would  do  everything  possible  to 
prevent  the  recurrence  of  such  a  tragedy.  To  our  sur- 
20  prise  they  did  nothing  whatever,  and  I  made  my  first 
acquaintance  then  with  those  pathetic  documents 
signed  by  the  parents  of  working  children,  that  they 

182 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  183 


will  make  no  claim  for  damages  resulting  from  <£ care¬ 
lessness.  ” 

The  visits  we  made  in  the  neighborhood  constantly 
discovered  women  sewing  upon  sweatshop  work,  and 
often  they  were  assisted  by  incredibly  small  children. 
I  remember  a  little  girl  of  four  who  pulled  out  basting 
threads  hour  after  hour,  sitting  on  a  stool  at  the  feet  of 
her  Bohemian  mother,  a  little  bunch  of  human  misery. 
But  even  for  that  there  was  no  legal  redress,  for  the 
only  child  labor  law  in  Illinois,  with  any  provision  for 
enforcement,  had  been  secured  by  the  coal  miners’ 
unions,  and  was  confined  to  children  employed  in  mines. 

We  learned  to  know  many  families  in  which  the 
working  children  contributed  to  the  support  of  their 
parents,  not  only  because  they  spoke  English  better 
than  the  older  immigrants  and  were  willing  to  take 
lower  wages,  but  because  their  parents  gradually  found 
it  easy  to  live  upon  their  earnings.  A  South  Italian 
peasant  who  has  picked  olives  and  packed  oranges  from 
his  toddling  babyhood,  cannot  see  at  once  the  differ¬ 
ence  between  the  outdoor  healthy  work  which  he  has 
performed  in  the  varying  seasons,  and  the  long  hours  of 
monotonous  factory  life  which  his  child  encounters 
when  he  goes  to  work  in  Chicago.  An  Italian  father 
came  to  us  in  great  grief  over  the  death  of  his  eldest 
child,  a  little  girl  of  twelve,  who  had  brought  the  largest 
wages  in  to  the  family  fund.  In  the  midst  of  his  genuine 
sorrow  he  said:  ‘‘She  ,vas  the  oldest  kid  I  had.  Now  I 


I  o 


I  5 


2  o 


2  5 


1 84  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

shall  have  to  go  back  to  work  again  until  the  next  one 
is  able  to  take  care  of  me.”  The  man  was  only  thirty- 
three  and  had  hoped  to  retire  from  work  at  least  during 
the  winters.  No  foreman  cared  to  have  him  in  a 
5  factory,  untrained  and  unintelligent  as  he  was.  It  was 
much  easier  for  his  bright,  English-speaking  little  girl 
to  get  a  chance  to  paste  labels  on  a  box  than  for  him  to 
secure  an  opportunity  to  carry  pig  iron.  The  effect 
on  the  child  was  what  no  one  concerned  thought  about, 
oin  the  abnormal  effort  she  made  thus  prematurely  to 
bear  the  weight  of  life.  Another  little  girl  of  thirteen,  a 
Russian-Jewish  child  employed  in  a  laundry  at  a  heavy 
task  beyond  her  strength,  committed  suicide,  because 
she  had  borrowed  three  dollars  from  a  companion  which 
5  she  could  not  repay  unless  she  confided  the  story  to  her 
parents  and  gave  up  an  entire  week’s  wages  —  but  what 
could  the  family  live  upon  that  week  in  case  she  did! 
Her  child  mind,  of  course,  had  no  sense  of  proportion, 
and  carbolic  acid  appeared  inevitable, 
o  While  we  found  many  pathetic  cases  of  child  labor 
and  hard-driven  victims  of  the  sweating  system  who 
could  not  possibly  earn  enough  in  the  short  busy  season 
to  support  themselves  during  the  rest  of  the  year,  it 
became  evident  that  we  must  add  carefully  collected 
5  information  to  our  general  impression  of  neighborhood 
conditions  if  we  would  make  it  of  any  genuine  value. 

There  was  at  that  time  no  statistical  information  on 
Chicago  industrial  conditions,  and  Mrs.  Florence. 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  185 

Kelley,0  an  early  resident  of  Hull-House,  suggested  to 
the  Illinois  State  Bureau  of  Labor  that  they  investigate 
the  sweating  system  in  Chicago  with  its  attendant  child 
labor.  The  head  of  the  Bureau  adopted  this  suggestion 
and  engaged  Mrs.  Kelley  to  make  the  investigation.  5 
When  the  report  was  presented  to  the  Illinois  Legisla¬ 
ture,  a  special  committee  was  appointed  to  look  into  the 
Chicago  conditions.  I  well  recall  that  on  the  Sunday 
the  members  of  this  commission  came  to  dine  at  Hull- 
House,  our  hopes  ran  high,  and  we  believed  that  at  10 
last  some  of  the  worst  ills  under  which  our  neighbors 
were  suffering  would  be  brought  to  an  end. 

As  a  result  of  its  investigations,  this  committee 
recommended  to  the  Legislature  the  provisions  which 
afterwards  became  those  of  the  first  factory  law  of  1 5 
Illinois,  regulating  the  sanitary  conditions  of  the  sweat¬ 
shop  and  fixing  fourteen  as  the  age  at  which  a  child 
might  be  employed.  Before  the  passage  of  the  law 
could  be  secured,  it  was  necessary  to  appeal  to  all 
elements  of  the  community,  and  a  little  group  of  us  20 
addressed  the  open  meetings  of  trades-unions  and  of 
benefit  societies,  church  organizations,  and  social  clubs 
literally  every  evening  for  three  months.  Of  course  the 
most  energetic  help  as  well  as  intelligent  understanding 
came  from  the  trades-unions.  The  central  labor  body  2  5 
of  Chicago,  then  called  the  Trades  and  Labor  Assembly, 
had  previously  appointed  a  committee  of  investigation 
to  inquire  into  the  sweating  system.  This  committee 


1 86  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


consisted  of  five  delegates  from  the  unions  and  five  out¬ 
side  their  membership.  Two  of  the  latter  were  residents 
of  Hull-House,  and  continued  with  the  unions  in  their 
well-conducted  campaign  until  the  passage  of  Illinois’s 
5  first  Factory  Legislation  was  secured,  a  statute  which 
has  gradually  been  built  upon  by  many  public-spirited 
citizens  until  Illinois  stands  well  among  the  states,  at 
least  in  the  matter  of  protecting  her  children.  The 
Hull-House  residents  that  winter  had  their  first  experi- 
o  ence  in  lobbying.  I  remember  that  I  very  much  dis¬ 
liked  the  word  and  still  more  the  prospect  of  the  lobby¬ 
ing  itself,  and  we  insisted  that  well-known  Chicago 
women  should  accompany  this  first  little  group  of 
Settlement  folk  who  with  trade-unionists  moved  upon 
5  the  state  capitol  in  behalf  of  factory  legislation.  The 
national  or,  to  use  its  formal  name,  The  General 
Federation  of  Women’s  Clubs  had  been  organized  in 
Chicago  only  the  year  before  this  legislation  was  se¬ 
cured.  The  Federation  was  then  timid  in  regard  to  all 
o  legislation  because  it  was  anxious  not  to  frighten  its 
new  membership,  although  its  second  president,  Mrs. 
Henrotin,0  was  most  untiring  in  her  efforts  to  secure 
this  law. 

It  was,  perhaps,  a  premature  effort,  though  certainly 
5  founded  upon  a  genuine  need,  to  urge  that  a  clause 
limiting  the  hours  of  all  women  working  in  factories  or 
workshops  to  eight  a  day,  or  forty-eight  a  week,  should 
be  inserted  in  the  first  factory  legislation  of  the  State. 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  187 

Although  we  had  lived  at  Hull-House  but  three  years 
when  we  urged  this  legislation,  we  had  known  a  large 
number  of  young  girls  who  were  constantly  exhausted 
by  night  work;  for  whatever  may  be  said  in  defense  of 
night  work  for  men,  few  women  are  able  to  endure  it. 
A  man  who  works  by  night  sleeps  regularly  by  day,  but 
a  woman  finds  it  impossible  to  put  aside  the  household 
duties  which  crowd  upon  her,  and  a  conscientious  girl 
finds  it  hard  to  sleep  with  her  mother  washing  and 
scrubbing  within  a  few  feet  of  her  bed.  One  of  the  most 
painful  impressions  of  those  first  years  is  that  of  pale, 
listless  girls,  who  worked  regularly  in  a  factory  of  the 
vicinity  which  was  then  running  full  night  time.  These 
girls  also  encountered  a  special  danger  in  the  early 
morning  hours  as  they  returned  from  work,  debilitated 
and  exhausted,  and  only  too  easily  convinced  that  a 
drink  and  a  little  dancing  at  the  end  of  the  balls  in  the 
saloon  dance  halls,  was  what  they  needed  to  brace 
them.  One  of  the  girls  whom  we  then  knew,  whose 
name,  Chloe,  seemed  to  fit  her  delicate  charm,  craving 
a  drink  to  dispel  her  lassitude  before  her  tired  feet 
should  take  the  long  walk  home,  had  thus  been  decoyed 
into  a  saloon,  where  the  soft  drink  was  followed  by  an 
alcoholic  one  containing  “knockout  drops,”  and  she 
awoke  in  a  disreputable  rooming  house  —  too  frightened 
and  disgraced  to  return  to  her  mother. 

Thus  confronted  by  that  old  conundrum  of  the  inter¬ 
dependence  of  matter  and  spirit,  the  conviction  was 


1 88  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


forced  upon  us  that  long  and  exhausting  hours  of  work 
are  almost  sure  to  be  followed  by  lurid  and  exciting 
pleasures;  that  the  power  to  overcome  temptation 
reaches  its  limit  almost  automatically  with  that  of 
s  physical  resistance.  The  eight-hour  clause  in  this  first 
factory  law  met  with  much  less  opposition  in  the 
Legislature  than  was  anticipated,  and  was  enforced  for 
a  year  before  it  was  pronounced  unconstitutional  by 
the  Supreme  Court  of  Illinois.  During  the  halcyon 
o  months  when  it  was  a  law,  a  large  and  enthusiastic 
Eight-Hour  Club  of  working  women  met  at  Hull-House, 
to  read  the  literature  on  the  subject  and  in  every  way 
to  prepare  themselves  to  make  public  sentiment  in  favor 
of  the  measure  which  meant  so  much  to  them.  The 
s  adverse  decision  in  the  test  case,  the  progress  of  which 
they  had  most  intelligently  followed,  was  a  matter  of 
great  disappointment.  The  entire  experience  left  on 
my  mind  a  distrust  of  all  legislation  which  was  not 
preceded  by  full  discussion  and  understanding.  A 
o  premature  measure  may  be  carried  through  a  legislature 
by  perfectly  legitimate  means  and  still  fail  to  possess 
vitality  and  a  sense  of  maturity.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
administration  of  an  advanced  law  acts  somewhat  as  a 
referendum.  The  people  have  an  opportunity  for  two 
s  years  to  see  the  effects  of  its  operation.  If  they  choose 
to  reopen  the  matter  at  the  next  General  Assembly,  it 
can  be  discussed  with  experience  and  conviction;  the 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  189 

ver)’  operation  of  the  law  has  performed  the  function 
of  the  “referendum'’  in  a  limited  use  of  the  term. 

Founded  upon  some  such  compunction,  the  sense 
that  the  passage  of  the  child  labor  law  would  in  many 
cases  work  hardship,  was  never  absent  from  my  mind  5 
during  the  earliest  years  of  its  operation.  I  addressed 
as  many  mothers’  meetings  and  clubs  among  working 
women  as  I  could,  in  order  to  make  clear  the  object  of 
the  law  and  the  ultimate  benefit  to  themselves  as  well 
as  to  their  children.  I  am  happy  to  remember  that  I  10 
never  met  with  lack  of  understanding  among  the  hard¬ 
working  widows,  in  whose  behalf  many  prosperous 
people  were  so  eloquent.  These  widowed  mothers 
would  say,  “Why,  of  course,  that  is  what  I  am  working 
for  —  to  give  the  children  a  chance.  I  want  them  to  1 5 
have  more  education  than  I  had’’;  or  another,  “That 
is  why  we  came  to  America,  and  I  don’t  want  to  spoil 
his  start,  even  although  his  father  is  dead”;  or,  “It’s 
different  in  America.  A  boy  gets  left  if  he  isn’t  educat¬ 
ed.”  There  was  always  a  willingness,  even  among  the  20 v 
poorest  women,  to  keep  on  with  the  hard  night  scrub¬ 
bing  or  the  long  days  of  washing  for  the  children’s  sake. 

The  bitterest  opposition  to  the  law  came  from  the 
large  glass  companies  who  were  so  accustomed  to  use 
the  labor  of  children,  that  they  were  convinced  the  2  5 
manufacturing  of  glass  could  not  be  carried  on  without 


it. 


1 9o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


Fifteen  years  ago  the  state  of  Illinois,  as  well  as 
Chicago,  exhibited  many  characteristics  of  the  pioneer 
country  in  which  untrammeled  energy  and  an  “  early 
start”  were  still  the  most  highly  prized  generators  of 
5  success.  Although  this  first  labor  legislation  was  but 
bringing  Illinois  into  line  with  the  nations  in  the 
modern  industrial  world,  which  “have  long  been 
obliged  for  their  own  sakes  to  come  to  the  aid  of  the 
workers  by  which  they  live,  —  that  the  child,  the  young 
o  person,  and  the  woman  may  be  protected  from  their  own 
weakness  and  necessity,  —  ”  nevertheless  from  the 
first  it  ran  counter  to  the  instinct  and  tradition,  almost 
to  the  very  religion  of  the  manufacturers  of  the  state, 
who  were  for  the  most  part  self-made  men. 
s  This  first  attempt  in  Illinois  for  adequate  factory 
legislation  also  was  associated  in  the  minds  of  business 
men  with  radicalism,  because  the  law  was  secured  during 
the  term  of  Governor  Altgeld0  and  was  first  enforced 
during  his  administration.  While  nothing  in  its  genesis 
oor  spirit  could  be  further  from  “anarchy”  than  factory 
legislation,  and  while  the  first  law  in  Illinois  was  still 
far  behind  Massachusetts  and  New  York,  the  fact  that 
Governor  Altgeld  pardoned  from  the  state’s  prison  the 
anarchists  who  had  been  sentenced  there  after  the  Hay- 
5  market  riot,  gave  the  opponents  of  this  most  reasonable 
legislation  a  quickly  utilized  opportunity  to  couple  it 
with  that  detested  word;  the  state  document  which 
accompanied  Governor  Altgeld’s  pardon  gave  these  un- 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  191 

generous  critics  a  further  opportunity,  because  a  magnan¬ 
imous  action  was  marred  by  personal  rancor,  betraying 
for  the  moment  the  infirmity  of  a  noble  mind.  For  all 
of  these  reasons  this  first  modification  of  the  undis¬ 
turbed  control  of  the  aggressive  captains  of  industry, 
could  not  be  enforced  without  resistance  marked  by 
dramatic  episodes  and  revolts.  The  inception  of  the 
law  had  already  become  associated  with  Hull-House, 
and  when  its  ministration  was  also  centered  there,  we 
inevitably  received  all  the  odium  which  these  first 
efforts  entailed.  Mrs.  Kelley  was  appointed  the  first 
factory  inspector  with  a  deputy  and  a  force  of  twelve 
inspectors  to  enforce  the  law.  Both  Mrs.  Kelley  and 
her  assistant,  Mrs.  Stevens,  lived  at  Hull-House;  the 
office  was  on  Polk  Street  directly  opposite,  and  one  of 
the  most  vigorous  deputies  was  the  president  of  the 
Jane  Club.  In  addition,  one  of  the  early  men  residents, 
since  dean  of  a  state  law  school,  acted  as  prosecutor  in 
the  cases  brought  against  the  violators  of  the  law. 

Chicago  had  for  years  been  notoriously  lax  in  the 
administration  of  law,  and  the  enforcement  of  an  un¬ 
popular  measure  was  resented  equally  by  the  president 
of  a  large  manufacturing  concern  and  by  the  former 
victim  of  a  sweatshop  who  had  started  a  place  of  his 
own.  Whatever  the  sentiments  towards  the  new  law  on 
the  part  of  the  employers,  there  was  no  doubt  of  its 
enthusiastic  reception  by  the  trades-unions,  as  the 
securing  of  the  law  had  already  come  from  them,  and 


i92  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

through  the  years  which  have  elapsed  since,  the  ex¬ 
perience  of  the  Hull-House  residents  would  coincide 
with  that  of  an  English  statesman  who  said  that  “a 
common  rule  for  the  standard  of  life  and  the  condition 
5  of  labor  may  be  secured  by  legislation,  but  it  must  be 
maintained  by  trades  unionism.” 

This  special  value  of  the  trades-unions  first  became 
clear  to  the  residents  of  Hull-House  in  connection  with 
the  sweating  system.  We  early  found  that  the  women 
oin  the  sewing  trades  were  sorely  in  need  of  help.  The 
trade  was  thoroughly  disorganized,  Russian  and  Polish 
tailors  competing  against  English-speaking  tailors,  un¬ 
skilled  Bohemian  and  Italian  women  competing  against 
both.  These  women  seem  to  have  been  best  helped 
s  through  the  use  of  the  label  when  unions  of  specialized 
workers  in  the  trade  are  strong  enough  to  insist  that 
the  manufacturers  shall  “give  out  work”  only  to  those 
holding  union  cards.  It  was  certainly  impressive  when 
the  garment  makers  themselves  in  this  way  finally 
o  succeeded  in  organizing  six  hundred  of  the  Italian 
women  in  our  immediate  vicinity,  who  had  finished 
garments  at  home  for  the  most  wretched  and  precarious 
wages.  To  be  sure,  the  most  ignorant  women  only  knew 
that  “you  couldn’t  get  clothes  to  sew”  from  the  places 
5  where  they  paid  the  best,  unless  “you  had  a  card,”  but 
through  the  veins  of  most  of  them  there  pulsed  the 
quickened  blood  of  a  new  fellowship,  a  sense  of  comfort 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  193 

and  aid  which  had  been  held  out  to  them  by  their  fellow- 
workers. 

During  the  fourth  year  of  our  residence  at  Hull- 
House  we  found  ourselves  in  a  large  mass  meeting 
ardently  advocating  the  passage  of  a  Federal  measure  5 
called  the  Sulzer  Bill.  Even  in  our  short  struggle  with 
the  evils  of  the  sweating  system  it  did  not  seem  strange 
that  the  center  of  the  effort  had  shifted  to  Washington, 
for  by  that  time  we  had  realized  that  the  sanitary 
regulation  of  sweatshops  by  city  officials,  and  a  careful  1 
enforcement  of  factory  legislation  by  state  factory  in¬ 
spectors  will  not  avail,  unless  each  city  and  state  shall 
be  able  to  pass  and  enforce  a  code  of  comparatively  uni¬ 
form  legislation.  Although  the  Sulzer  Act  failed  to 
utilize  the  Interstate  Commerce  legislation  for  its  pur-  1 
pose,  many  of  the  national  representatives  realized  for 
the  first  time  that  only  by  federal  legislation  could  their 
constituents  in  remote  country  places  be  protected  from 
contagious  diseases  raging  in  New  York  or  Chicago,  for 
many  country  doctors  testify  as  to  the  outbreak  of  2 
scarlet  fever  in  rural  neighborhoods  after  the  children 
have  begun  to  wear  the  winter  overcoats  and  cloaks 
which  have  been  sent  from  infected  city  sweatshops. 

Through  our  efforts  to  modify  the  sweating  system, 
the  Hull-House  residents  gradually  became  committed  2 
to  the  fortunes  of  the  Consumers’  League,  an  organiza¬ 
tion  which  for  years  has  been  approaching  the  question 


194  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

of  the  underpaid  sewing  woman  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  ultimate  responsibility  lodged  in  the  consumer. 
It  becomes  more  reasonable  to  make\  the  presentation 
of  the  sweatshop  situation  through  this  League,  as  it  is 
s  more  effectual  to  work  with  them  for  the  extension  of 
legal  provisions  in  the  slow  upbuilding  of  that  code  of 
legislation  which  is  alone  sufficient  to  protect  the  home 
from  the  dangers  incident  to  the  sweating  system. 

The  Consumers’  League  seems  to  afford  the  best 
o  method  of  approach  for  the  protection  of  girls  in  depart¬ 
ment  stores;  I  recall  a  group  of  girls  from  a  neighboring 
“emporium”  who  applied  to  Hull-House  for  dancing 
parties  on  alternate  Sunday  afternoons.  In  reply  to  our 
protest  they  told  us  they  not  only  worked  late  every 
5  evening,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  each  was  supposed  to 
have  “two  nights  a  v/eek  off,”  and  every  Sunday  morn¬ 
ing,  but  that  on  alternate  Sunday  afternoons  they  were 
required  “to  sort  the  stock.”  Over  and  over  again, 
meetings  called  by  the  Clerks  Union  and  others,  have 
obeen  held  at  Hull-House  protesting  against  these  in¬ 
credibly  long  hours.  Little  modification  has  come 
about,  however,  during  our  twenty  years  of  residence, 
although  one  large  store  in  the  Bohemian  quarter  closes 
all  day  on  Sunday  and  many  of  the  others  for  three 
s  nights  a  week.  In  spite  of  the  Sunday  work,  these  girls 
prefer  the  outlying  department  stores  to  those  down 
town;  there  is  more  social  intercouse  with  the  customers, 
more  kindliness  and  social  equality  between  the  sales- 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  195 

women  and  the  managers,  and  above  all  the  girls  have 
the  protection  naturally  afforded  by  friends  and  neigh¬ 
bors  and  they  are  free  from  that  suspicion  which  so 
often  haunts  the  girls  down  town,  that  their  fellow- 
workers  may  not  be  “nice  girls.” 

In  the  first  years  of  Hull-House  we  came  across  no 
trades-unions  among  the  women  workers,  and  I  think, 
perhaps,  that  only  one  union,  composed  solely  of  women, 
was  to  be  found  in  Chicago  then  —  that  of  the  book¬ 
binders.  I  easily  recall  the  evening  when  the  president 
of  this  pioneer  organization  accepted  an  invitation  to 
take  dinner  at  Hull-House.  She  came  in  rather  a 
recalcitrant  mood,  expecting  to  be  patronized  and  so 
suspicious  of  our  motives,  that  it  was  only  after  she  had 
been  persuaded  to  become  a  guest  of  the  house  for 
several  weeks  in  order  to  find  out  about  us  for  herself, 
that  she  was  convinced  of  our  sincerity  and  of  the  ability 
of  “outsiders”  to  be  of  any  service  to  working  women. 
She  afterward  became  closely  identified  with  Hull- 
House,  and  her  hearty  cooperation  was  assured  until 
she  moved  to  Boston  and  became  a  general  organizer 
for  the  American  Federation  of  Labor. 

The  women  shirt  makers  and  the  women  cloak  makers 
were  both  organized  at  Hull-House  as  was  also  the 
Dorcas  Federal  Labor  Union,  which  had  been  founded 
through  the  efforts  of  a  working  woman,  then  one  of 
the  residents.  The  latter  union  met  once  a  month  in 
our  drawing-room.  It  was  composed  of  representatives 


196  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

from  all  the  unions  in  the  city  which  included  women  in 
their  membership  and  also  received  other  women  in 
sympathy  with  unionism.  It  was  accorded  representa¬ 
tion  in  the  central  labor  body  of  the  city,  and  later  it 
s  joined  its  efforts  with  those  of  others  to  found  the 
Woman’s  Union  Label  League.  In  what  we  considered 
a  praiseworthy  effort  to  unite  it  with  other  organiza¬ 
tions,  the  president  of  a  leading  Woman’s  Club  applied 
for  membership.  We  were  so  sure  of  her  election  that 
oshe  stood  just  outside  of  the  drawing-room  door,  or,  in 
trades-union  language,  “the  wicket  gate,”  while  her 
name  was  voted  upon.  To  our  chagrin  she  did  not  re¬ 
ceive  enough  votes  to  secure  her  admission,  not  because 
the  working  girls,  as  they  were  careful  to  state,  did  not 
s  admire  her,  but  because  she  “seemed  to  belong  to  the 
other  side.”  Fortunately,  the  big-minded  woman  so 
thoroughly  understood  the  vote  and  her  interest  in 
working  women  was  so  genuine,  that  it  was  less  than  a 
decade  afterward  when  she  was  elected  to  the  presidency 
oof  the  National  Woman’s  Trades  Union  League.  The 
incident  and  the  sequel  registers,  perhaps,  the  change  in 
Chicago  towards  the  labor  movement,  the  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  it  is  a  general  social  movement  concern¬ 
ing  all  members  of  society  and  not  merely  a  class 
5  struggle. 

Some  such  public  estimate  of  the  labor  movement  was 
brought  home  to  Chicago  during  several  conspicuous 
strikes;  at  least  labor  legislation  has  twice  been  in- 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  197 

augurated  because  its  need  was  thus  made  clear.  After 
the  Pullman  strike0  various  elements  in  the  community 
were  unexpectedly  brought  together  that  they  might 
soberly  consider  and  rectify  the  weaknesses  in  the  legal 
structure  which  the  strike  had  revealed.  These  citizens  5 
arranged  for  a  large  and  representative  convention  to 
be  held  in  Chicago  on  Industrial  Conciliation  and 
Arbitration.  I  served  as  secretary  of  the  committee 
from  the  new  Civic  Federation  having  the  matter  in 
charge,  and  our  hopes  ran  high  when,  as  a  result  of  the  10 
agitation,  the  Illinois  legislature  passed  a  law  creating 
a  State  Board  of  Conciliation  and  Arbitration.  But 
even  a  state  board  cannot  accomplish  more  than  public 
sentiment  authorizes  and  sustains,  and  we  might  easily 
have  been  discouraged  in  those  early  days  could  we  1 5 
have  foreseen  some  of  the  industrial  disturbances  which 
have  since  disgraced  Chicago.  This  law  embodied  the 
best  provisions  of  the  then  existing  laws  for  the  arbitra¬ 
tion  of  industrial  disputes.  At  the  time  the  word 
arbitration  was  still  a  word  to  conjure  with,  and  many  20 
Chicago  citizens  were  convinced,  not  only  of  the  danger 
and  futility  involved  in  the  open  warfare  of  opposing 
social  forces,  but  further  believed  that  the  search  for 
justice  and  righteousness  in  industrial  relations  was 
made  infinitely  more  difficult  thereby.  25 

The  Pullman  strike  afforded  much  illumination  to 
many  Chicago  people.  Before  it,  there  had  been  nothing 
in  my  experience  to  reveal  that  distinct  cleavage  of 


i98  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-MOUSE 

society,  which  a  general  strike  at  least  momentarily 
affords.  Certainly,  during  all  those  dark  days  of  the 
Pullman  strike,  the  growth  of  class  bitterness  was  most 
obvious.  The  fact  that  the  Settlement  maintained 
5  avenues  of  intercourse  with  both  sides  seemed  to  give 
it  opportunity  for  nothing  but  a  realization  of  the  bitter¬ 
ness  and  division  along  class  lines.  I  had  known  Air. 
Pullman  and  had  seen  his  genuine  pride  and  pleasure 
in  the  model  town  he  had  built  with  so  much  care;  and 
ol  had  an  opportunity  to  talk  to  many  of  the  Pullman 
employees  during  the  strike  when  I  was  sent  from  a  so- 
called  “Citizens’  Arbitration  Committee”  to  their  first 
meetings  held  in  a  hall  in  the  neighboring  village  of 
Kensington,  and  when  I  was  invited  to  the  modest 
s  supper  tables  laid  in  the  model  houses.  The  employees 
then  expected  a  speedy  settlement  and  no  one  doubted 
but  that  all  the  grievances  connected  with  the  “straw 
bosses”  would  be  quickly  remedied  and  that  the  benevo¬ 
lence  which  had  built  the  model  town  would  not  fail 
othem.  They  were  sure  that  the  “straw  bosses”  had 
misrepresented  the  state  of  affairs,  for  this  very  first 
awakening  to  class  consciousness  bore  many  traces  of 
the  servility  on  one  side  and  the  arrogance  on  the  other 
which  had  so  long  prevailed  in  the  model  town.  The 
5  entire  strike  demonstrated  how  often  the  outcome  of 
far-reaching  industrial  disturbances  is  dependent  upon 
the  personal  will  of  the  employer  or  the  temperament  of 
a  strike  leader.  Those  familiar  with  strikes  know  only 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  199 

too  well  how  much  they  are  influenced  by  poignant 
domestic  situations,  by  the  troubled  consciences  of  the 
minority  directors,  by  the  suffering  women  and  children, 
by  the  keen  excitement  of  the  struggle,  by  the  religious 
scruples  sternly  suppressed  but  occasionally  asserting  5 
themselves,  now  on  one  side  and  now  on  the  other,  and 
by  that  undefined  psychology  of  the  crowd  which  we 
understand  so  little.  All  of  these  factors  also  influence 
the  public  and  do  much  to  determine  popular  sympathy 
and  judgment.  In  the  early  days  of  the  Pullman  strike,  10 
as  I  was  coming  down  in  the  elevator  of  the  Auditorium 
Hotel  from  one  of  the  futile  meetings  of  the  Arbitration 
Committee,  I  met  an  acquaintance,  who  angrily  said 
‘That  the  strikers  ought  all  to  be  shot.”  As  I  had  heard 
nothing  so  bloodthirsty  as  this  either  from  the  most  en-  1 5 
raged  capitalist  or  from  the  most  desperate  of  the  men, 
and  was  interested  to  find  the  cause  of  such  a  senseless 
outbreak,  I  finally  discovered  that  the  first  ten  thousand 
dollars  which  my  acquaintance  had  ever  saved,  requir¬ 
ing,  he  said,  years  of  effort  from  the  time  he  was  twelve  20 
years  old  until  he  was  thirty,  had  been  lost  as  the 
result  of  a  strike;  he  clinched  his  argument  that  he 
knew  what  he  was  talking  about,  with  the  statement 
that  “no  one  need  expect  him  to  have  any  sympathy 
with  strikers  or  with  their  affairs.”  25 

A  very  intimate  and  personal  experience  revealed,  at 
least  to  myself,  my  constant  dread  of  the  spreading  ill 
will.  At  the  height  of  the  sympathetic  strike  my  oldest 


200  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


sister,  who  was  convalescing  from  a  long  illness  in  a 
hospital  near  Chicago,  became  suddenly  very  much 
worse.  While  I  was  able  to  reach  her  at  once,  every 
possible  obstacle  of  a  delayed  and  blocked  transporta- 
5  tion  system  interrupted  the  journey  of  her  husband  and 
children  who  were  hurrying  to.  her  bedside  from  a  dis¬ 
tant  state.  As  the  end  drew  nearer  and  I  was  obliged 
to  reply  to  my  sister’s  constant  inquiries  that  her  family 
had  not  yet  come,  I  was  filled  with  a  profound  apprehen- 
iosion  lest  her  last  hours  should  be  touched  with  resent¬ 
ment  towards  those  responsible  for  the  delay;  lest  her 
unutterable  longing  should  at  the  very  end  be  tinged 
with  bitterness.  She  must  have  divined  what  was  in 
my  mind,  for  at  last  she  said  each  time  after  the  repeti- 
15  tion  of  my  sad  news,  “I  don’t  blame  any  one,  I  am  not 
judging  them.”  My  heart  was  comforted  and  heavy 
at  the  same  time;  but  how  many  more  such  moments  of 
sorrow  and  death  were  being  made  difficult  and  lonely 
throughout  the  land,  and  how  much  would  these  ex- 
20  periences  add  to  the  lasting  bitterness,  that  touch  of 
self-righteousness  which  makes  the  spirit  of  forgiveness 
well-nigh  impossible? 

When  I  returned  to  Chicago  from  the  quiet  country 
I  saw  the  Federal  troops  encamped  about  the  post 
2  5  office;  almost  every  one  on  Halsted  Street  wearing  a 
white  ribbon,  the  emblem  of  the  strikers’  side;  the 
residents  at  Hull-House  divided  in  opinion  as  to  the 
righteousness  of  this  or  that  measure;  and  no  one  able 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  201 


to  secure  any  real  information  as  to  which  side  was 
burning  the  cars.  After  the  Pullman  strike  I  made  an 
attempt  to  analyze  in  a  paper  which  I  called  “The 
Modern  King  Lear,”  the  inevitable  revolt  of  human 
nature  against  the  plans  Mr.  Pullman  had  made  for  5 
his  employees,  the  miscarriage  of  which  appeared  to 
him  such  black  ingratitude.  It  seemed  to  me  unendura¬ 
ble  not  to  make  some  effort  to  gather  together  the  social 
implications  of  the  failure  of  this  benevolent  employer 
and  its  relation  to  the  demand  for  a  more  democratic  10 
administration  of  industry.  Doubtless  the  paper  repre¬ 
sented  a  certain  “excess  of  participation,”  to  use  a 
gentle  phrase  of  Charles  Lamb’s  in  preference  to  a  more 
emphatic  one  used  by  Mr.  Pullman  himself.  The  last 
picture  of  the  Pullman  strike  which  I  distinctly  recall  1 5 
was  three  years  later  when  one  of  the  strike  leaders 
came  to  see  me.  Although  out  of  work  for  most  of  the 
time  since  the  strike,  he  had  been  undisturbed  for  six 
months  in  the  repair  shops  of  a  street  car  company, 
under  an  assumed  name,  but  he  had  at  that  moment  20 
been  discovered  and  dismissed.  He  was  a  superior  type 
of  English  workingman,  but  as  he  stood  there,  broken 
and  discouraged,  believing  himself  so  black-listed  that 
his  skill  could  never  be  used  again,  filled  with  sorrow 
over  the  loss  of  his  wife  who  had  recently  died  after  an  25 
illness  with  distressing  mental  symptoms,  realizing 
keenly  the  lack  of  the  respectable  way  of  living  he  had 
always  until  now  been  able  to  maintain,  he  seemed  to 


202  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


me  an  epitome  of  the  wretched  human  waste  such  a 
strike  implies.  I  fervently  hoped  that  the  new  arbitra¬ 
tion  law  would  prohibit  in  Chicago  forever  more  such 
brutal  and  ineffective  methods  of  settling  industrial  dis- 
s  putes.  And  yet  even  as  early  as  1896,  we  found  the 
greatest  difficulty  in  applying  the  arbitration  law  to  the 
garment  workers’  strike,  although  it  was  finally  accom¬ 
plished  after  various  mass  meetings  had  urged  it.  The 
cruelty  and  waste  of  the  strike  as  an  implement  for 
o  securing  the  most  reasonable  demands,  came  to  me  at 
another  time,  during  the  long  strike  of  the  clothing 
cutters.  They  had  protested,  not  only  against  various 
wrongs  of  their  own,  but  against  the  fact  that  the 
tailors  employed  by  the  custom  merchants  were  obliged 
s  to  furnish  their  own  workshops  and  thus  bore  a  burden 
of  rent  which  belonged  to  the  employer.  One  of  the 
leaders  in  this  strike,  whom  I  had  known  for  several 
years  as  a  sober,  industrious,  and  unusually  intelligent 
man,  I  saw  gradually  break  down  during  the  many  try- 
o  ing  weeks  and  at  last  suffer  a  complete  moral  collapse. 

He  was  a  man  of  sensitive  organization  under  the 
necessity,  as  is  every  leader  during  a  strike,  to  address 
the  same  body  of  men  day  after  day  with  an  appeal 
sufficiently  emotional  to  respond  to  their  sense  of 
s  injury;  to  receive  callers  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night; 
to  sympathize  with  all  the  distress  of  the  strikers  who 
see  their  familes  daily  suffering;  he  must  do  it  all  with 
the  sickening  sense  of  the  increasing  privation  in  his 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  203 

own  home,  and  in  this  case  with  the  consciousness  that 
failure  was  approaching  nearer  each  day.  This  man, 
accustomed  to  the  monotony  of  his  workbench  and 
suddenly  thrown  into  a  new  situation,  showed  every 
sign  of  nervous  fatigue  before  the  final  collapse  came.  5 
He  disappeared  after  the  strike  and  I  did  not  see  him 
for  ten  years,  but  when  he  returned  he  immediately 
began  talking  about  the  old  grievances  which  he  had 
repeated  so  often  that  he  could  talk  of  nothing  else.  It 
was  easy  to  recognize  the  same  nervous  symptoms  which  10 
the  broken-down  lecturer  exhibits  who  has  depended 
upon  the  exploitation  of  his  own  experiences  to  keep 
himself  going.  One  of  his  stories  was  indeed  pathetic. 
His  employer,  during  the  busy  season,  had  met  him  one 
Sunday  afternoon  in  Lincoln  Park  whither  he  had  taken  1 5 
his  three  youngest  children,  one  of  whom  had  been  ill. 
The  employer  scolded  him  for  thus  wasting  his  time  and 
roughly  asked  why  he  had  not  taken  home  enough  work 
to  keep  himself  busy  through  the  day.  The  story  was 
quite  credible  because  the  residents  at  Hull-House  have  20 
had  many  opportunities  to  see  the  worker  driven  ruth¬ 
lessly  during  the  season  and  left  in  idleness  for  long 
weeks  afterward.  We  have  slowly  come  to  realize  that 
periodical  idleness  as  well  as  the  payment  of  wages 
insufficient  for  maintenance  of  the  manual  worker  in  25 
full  industrial  and  domestic  efficiency,  stand  economical¬ 
ly  on  the  same  footing  with  the  “sweated”  industries, 
the  overwork  of  women,  and  employment  of  children. 


204  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

But  of  all  the  aspects  of  social  misery  nothing  is  so 
heart-breaking  as  unemployment,  and  it  was  inevitable 
that  we  should  see  much  of  it  in  a  neighborhood  where 
low  rents  attracted  the  poorly  paid  worker  and  many 
5  newly  arrived  immigrants  who  were  first  employed  in 
gangs  upon  railroad  extensions  and  similar  undertakings. 
The  sturdy  peasants,  eager  for  work,  were  either  the 
victims  of  the  padrone  who  fleeced  them  unmercifully, 
both  in  securing  a  place  to  work  and  then  in  supplying 

1  o  them  with  food,  or  they  became  the  mere  sport  of  un¬ 

scrupulous  employment  agencies.  Hull-House  made 
an  investigation  both  of  the  padrone  and  of  the  agencies 
in  our  immediate  vicinity,  and  the  outcome  confirming 
what  we  already  suspected,  we  eagerly  threw  ourselves 
1 5  into  a  movement  to  procure  free  employment  bureaus 
under  State  control  until  a  law  authorizing  such  bureaus 
and  giving  the  officials  intrusted  with  their  management 
power  to  regulate  private  employment  agencies,  passed 
the  Illinois  Legislature  in  1899.  The  history  of  these 
20  bureaus  demonstrates  the  tendency  we  all  have,  to 
consider  a  legal  enactment  in  itself  an  achievement  and 
to  grow  careless  in  regard  to  its  administration  and 
actual  results;  for  an  investigation  into  the  situation 
ten  years  later  discovered  that  immigrants  were  still 

2  5  shamefully  imposed  upon.  A  group  of  Bulgarians  were 

found  who  had  been  sent  to  work  in  Arkansas  where 
their  services  were  not  needed;  they  walked  back  to 
Chicago  only  to  secure  their  next  job  in  Oklahoma  and 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  205 

to  pay  another  railroad  fare  as  well  as  another  com¬ 
mission  to  the  agency.  Not  only  was  there  no  method 
by  which  the  men  not  needed  in  Arkansas  could  know 
that  there  was  work  in  Oklahoma  unless  they  came 
back  to  Chicago  to  find  it  out,  but  there  was  no  cer-  5 
tainty  that  they  might  not  be  obliged  to  walk  back  from 
Oklahoma  because  the  Chicago  agency  had  already! 
sent  out  too  many  men. 

This  investigation  of  the  employment  bureau  re¬ 
sources  of  Chicago  was  undertaken  by  the  League  for  1 
the  Protection  of  Immigrants,  with  whom  it  is  possible 
for  Hull-House  to  cooperate  whenever  an  investigation 
of  the  immigrant  colonies  in  our  immediate  neighbor¬ 
hood  seems  necessary,  as  was  recently  done  in  regard 
to  the  Greek  colonies  of  Chicago.  The  superintendent  1 
of  this  League,  Miss  Grace  Abbott,  is  a  resident  of  EIull- 
House  and  all  of  our  later  attempts  to  secure  justice 
and  opportunity  for  immigrants  are  much  more  effective 
through  the  League,  and  when  we  speak  before  a  con¬ 
gressional  committee  in  Washington  concerning  the  2 
needs  of  Chicago  immigrants,  we  represent  the  League 
as  well  as  our  own  neighbors. 

It  is  in  connection  with  the  first  factory  employment 
of  newly  arrived  immigrants  and  the  innumerable 
difficulties  attached  to  their  first  adjustment,  that  some  2 
of  the  most  profound  industrial  disturbances  in  Chicago 
have  come  about.  Under  any  attempt  at  classification 
these  strikes  belong  more  to  the  general  social  move- 


206  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


ment  than  to  the  industrial  conflict,  for  the  strike  is  an 
implement  used  most  rashly  by  unorganized  labor  who, 
after  they  are  in  difficulties,  call  upon  the  trades-unions 
for  organization  and  direction.  They  are  similar  to 
s  those  strikes  which  are  inaugurated  by  the  unions  on 
behalf  of  unskilled  labor.  In  neither  case  do  the  hastily 
organized  unions  usually  hold  after  the  excitement  of 
the  moment  has  subsided,  and  the  most  valuable  result 
of  such  strikes  is  the  expanding  consciousness  of  the 
o  solidarity  of  the  workers.  This  was  certainly  the  result 
of  the  Chicago  stockyard  strike  in  1905,  inaugurated  on 
behalf  of  the  immigrant  laborers  and  so  conspicuously 
carried  on  without  violence  that,  although  twenty-two 
thousand  workers  were  idle  during  the  entire  summer, 
5  there  were  fewer  arrests  in  the  stockyards  district  than 
the  average  summer  months  afford.  However,  the 
story  of  this  strike  should  not  be  told  from  Hull-House, 
but  from  the  University  of  Chicago  Settlement,  where 
Miss  Mary  McDowell  performed  such  signal  public 
o  service  during  that  trying  summer.  It  would  be  inter¬ 
esting  to  trace  how  much  of  the  subsequent  exposure 
of  conditions  and  attempts  at  governmental  control  of 
this  huge  industry  had  their  genesis  in  this  first  attempt 
of  the  unskilled  workers  to  secure  a  higher  standard  of 
5  living.  Certainly  the  industrial  conflict  when  epitom¬ 
ized  in  a  strike,  centers  public  attention  on  conditions  as 
nothing  else  can  do.  A  strike  is  one  of  the  most  exciting 
episodes  in  modern  life  and  as  it  assumes  the  character- 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  207 

istics  of  a  game,  the  entire  population  of  a  city  becomes 
divided  into  two  cheering  sides.  In  such  moments  the 
fair-minded  public,  who  ought  to  be  depended  upon  as 
a  referee,  practically  disappears.  Any  one  who  tries 
to  keep  the  attitude  of  nonpartisanship,  which  is  per¬ 
haps  an  impossible  one,  is  quickly  under  suspicion  by 
both  sides.  At  least  that  was  the  fate  of  a  group  of 
citizens  appointed  by  the  mayor  of  Chicago  to  arbitrate 
during  the  stormy  teamsters’  strike  which  occurred  in 
1905.  We  sat  through  a  long  Sunday  afternoon  in  the 
mayor’s  office  in  the  City  Hall,  talking  first  with  the 
labor  men  and  then  with  the  group  of  capitalists.  The 
undertaking  was  the  more  futile  in  that  we  were  all 
practically  the  dupes  of  a  new  type  of  “industrial  con¬ 
spiracy”  successfully  inaugurated  in  Chicago  by  a  close 
compact  between  the  coal  teamsters’  union  and  the  coal 
team  owners’  association  who  had  formed  a  kind  of 
monopoly  hitherto  new  to  a  monopoly-ridden  public. 

The  stormy  teamsters’  strike,  ostensibly  undertaken 
in  defense  of  the  garment  workers,  but  really  arising 
from  causes  so  obscure  and  dishonorable  that  they  have 
never  yet  been  made  public,  was  the  culmination  of  a 
type  of  trades-unions  which  had  developed  in  Chicago 
during  the  preceding  decade  in  which  corruption  had 
flourished  almost  as  openly  as  it  had  previously  done  in 
the  City  Hall.  This  corruption  sometimes  took  the 
form  of  grafting  after  the  manner  of  Samuel  Parks  in 
New  York;  sometimes  that  of  political  deals  in  the 


208  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


“ delivery  of  the  labor  vote”;  and  sometimes  that  of  a 
combination  between  capital  and  labor  hunting  to¬ 
gether.  At  various  times  during  these  years  the  better 
type  of  trades-unionists  had  made  a  firm  stand  against 
5  this  corruption  and  a  determined  effort  to  eradicate  it 
from  the  labor  movement,  not  unlike  the  general  reform 
effort  of  many  American  cities  against  political  cor¬ 
ruption.  This  reform  movement  in  the  Chicago  Federa¬ 
tion  of  Labor  had  its  martyrs,  and  more  than  one  man 
o nearly  lost  his  life  through  the  “slugging”  methods 
employed  by  the  powerful  corruptionists.  And  yet 
even  in  the  midst  of  these  things  were  found  touching 
examples  of  fidelity  to  the  earlier  principles  of  brother¬ 
hood  totally  untouched  by  the  corruption.  At  one  time 
5  the  scrub  women  in  the  downtown  office  buildings  had 
a  union  of  their  own  affiliated  with  the  elevator  men  and 
the  janitors.  Although  the  union  was  used  merely  as  a 
weapon  in  the  fight  of  the  coal  teamsters  against  the  use 
of  natural  gas  in  downtown  buildings,  it  did  not  prevent 
othe  women  from  getting  their  first  glimpse  into  the 
fellowship  and  the  sense  of  protection  which  is  the  great 
gift  of  trades-unionism  to  the  unskilled,  unbefriended 
worker.  I  remember  in  a  meeting  held  at  Hull-House 
one  Sunday  afternoon,  that  the  president  of  a  “local” 
5  of  scrub  women  stood  up  to  relate  her  experience.  She 
told  first  of  the  long  years  in  which  the  fear  of  losing 
her  job  and  the  fluctuating  pay  were  harder  to  bear 
than  the  hard  work  itself,  when  she  had  regarded  all  the 


LABOR  LEGISLATION  IN  ILLINOIS  209 

other  women  who  scrubbed  in  the  same  building  merely 
as  rivals  and  was  most  afraid  of  the  most  miserable, 
because  they  offered  to  work  for  less  and  less  as  they 
were  pressed  harder  and  harder  by  debt.  Then  she  told 
of  the  change  that  had  come  when  the  elevator  men  and  5 
even  the  lordly  janitors  had  talked  to  her  about  an 
organization  and  had  said  that  they  must  all  stand  to¬ 
gether.  She  told  how  gradually  she  came  to  feel  sure  of 
her  job  and  of  her  regular  pay,  and  she  was  even  start¬ 
ing  to  buy  a  house  now  that  she  could  “calculate”  how  10 
much  she  “could  have  for  sure.”  Neither  she  nor  any 
of  the  other  members  knew  that  the  same  combination 
which  had  organized  the  scrub  women  into  a  union, 
later  destroyed  it  during  a  strike  inaugurated  for  their 
own  purposes.  1 5 

That  a  Settlement  is  drawn  into  the  labor  issues  of 
its  city  can  seem  remote  to  its  purpose  only  to  those 
who  fail  to  realize  that  so  far  as  the  present  industrial 
system  thwarts  our  ethical  demands,  not  only  for  social 
righteousness  but  for  social  order,  a  Settlement  is  com-  20 
mitted  to  an  effort  to  understand  and,  as  far  as  possible, 
to  alleviate  it.  That  in  this  effort  it  should  be  drawn 
into  fellowship  with  the  local  efforts  of  trades-unions  is 
most  obvious.  This  identity  of  aim  apparently  commits 
the  Settlement  in  the  public  mind  to  all  the  faiths  and  25 
works  of  actual  trades-unions.  Fellowship  has  so  long 
implied  similarity  of  creed  that  the  fact  that  the  Settle¬ 
ment  often  differs  widely  from  the  policy  pursued  by 


2io  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


trades-unionists  and  clearly  expresses  that  difference, 
does  not  in  the  least  change  public  opinion  in  regard  to 
its  identification.  This  is  especially  true  in  periods  of 
industrial  disturbance,  although  it  is  exactly  at  such 
5  moments  that  the  trades-unionists  themselves  are 
suspicious  of  all  but  their  “own  kind.”  It  is  during  the 
much  longer  periods  between  strikes  that  the  Settlement’s 
fellowship  with  trades-unions  is  most  satisfactory  in  the 
agitation  for  labor  legislation  and  similar  undertakings. 
oThe  first  officers  of  the  Chicago  Woman’s  Trades  Union 
League  were  residents  of  Settlements,  although  they 
can  claim  little  share  in  the  later  record  the  League 
made  in  securing  the  passage  of  the  Illinois  Ten-Hour 
Law  for  Women  and  in  its  many  other  fine  undertakings. 
5  Nevertheless  the  reaction  of  strikes  upon  Chicago 
Settlements  affords  an  interesting  study  in  social 
psychology.  For  whether  Hull-House  is  in  any  wise 
identified  with  the  strike  or  not,  makes  no  difference. 
When  “Labor”  is  in  disgrace  we  are  always  regarded  as 
o  belonging  to  it  and  share  the  opprobrium.  In  the  public 
excitement  following  the  Pullman  strike  Hull-House  lost 
many  friends;  later  the  teamsters’  strike  caused  another 
such  defection,  although  my  office  in  both  cases  had 
been  solely  that  of  a  duly  appointed  arbitrator. 

5  There  is,  however,  a  certain  comfort  in  the  assump¬ 
tion  I  have  often  encountered  that  wherever  one’s 
judgment  might  place  the  justice  of  a  given  situation, 
it  is  understood  that  one’s  sympathy  is  not  alienated  by 


i>^,0 N  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

”T'  TTT1 


LABOR  LEdfStATTCTN 


wrongdoing,  and  that  through  this  sympathy  one  is 
still  subject  to  vicarious  suffering.  I  recall  an  incident 
during  a  turbulent  Chicago  strike  which  brought  me 
much  comfort.  On  the  morning  of  the  day  of  a 
luncheon  to  which  I  had  accepted  an  invitation,  the 
waitress,  whom  I  did  not  know,  said  to  my  prospective 
hostess  that  she  was  sure  I  could  not  come.  Upon 
being  asked  for  her  reason  she  replied  that  she  had  seen 
in  the  morning  paper  that  the  strikers  had  killed  a 
“scab”  and  she  was  sure  that  I  would  feel  quite  too 
badly  about  such  a  thing,  to  be  able  to  keep  a  social 
engagement.  In  spite  of  the  confused  issues,  she 
evidently  realized  my  despair  over  the  violence  in  a 
strike  quite  as  definitely  as  if  she  had  been  told  about 
it.  Perhaps  that  sort  of  suffering  and  the  attempt  to 
interpret  opposing  forces  to  each  other  will  long  remain 
a  function  of  the  Settlement,  unsatisfactory  and 
difficult  as  the  role  often  becomes. 

There  has  gradually  developed  between  the  various 
Settlements  of  Chicago  a  warm  fellowship  founded  upon 
a  like-mindedness  resulting  from  similar  experiences, 
quite  as  identity  of  interest  and  endeavor  develop  an 
enduring  relation  between  the  residents  of  the  same 
Settlement.  This  sense  of  comradeship  is  never  stronger 
than  during  the  hardships  and  perplexities  of  a  strike 
of  unskilled  workers  revolting  against  the  conditions 
which  drag  them  even  below  the  level  of  their  European 
life.  At  such  times  the  residents  in  various  Settlements 


5 


i  o 


i  5 


2  O 


2  5 


2i2  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


are  driven  to  a  standard  oflife  argument  running  some¬ 
what  in  this  wise  —  that  as  the  very  existence  of  the 
State  depends  upon  the  character  of  its  citizens,  there¬ 
fore  if  certain  industrial  conditions  are  forcing  the 
5  workers  below  the  standard  of  decency,  it  becomes 
possible  to  deduce  the  right  of  State  regulation.  Even 
as  late  as  the  stockyard  strike  this  line  of  argument  was 
denounced  as  “ socialism ”  although  it  has  since  been 
confirmed  as  wise  statesmanship  by  a  decision  of  the 
o  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  which  was  ap¬ 
parently  secured  through  the  masterly  argument  of  the 
Brandeis  brief0  in  the  Oregon  ten-hour  case. 

In  such  wise  the  residents  of  an  industrial  neighbor¬ 
hood  gradually  comprehend  the  close  connection  of 
5  their  own  difficulties  with  national  and  even  inter¬ 
national  movements.  The  residents  in  the  Chicago 
Settlements  became  pioneer  members  in  the  American 
branch  of  the  International  League  for  Labor  Legis¬ 
lation,  because  their  neighborhood  experiences  had 
o  made  them  only  too  conscious  of  the  dire  need  for  pro¬ 
tective  legislation.  In  such  a  league,  with  its  ardent 
members  in  every  industrial  nation  of  Europe,  with  its 
encouraging  reports  of  the  abolition  of  all  night  work 
for  women  in  six  European  nations,  with  its  careful 
s  observations  on  the  results  of  employer’s  liability 
legislation  and  protection  of  machinery,  one  becomes 
identified  with  a  movement  of  world-wide  significance 
and  manifold  manifestation. 


% 


CHAPTER  XI 

Immigrants  and  Their  Children 

From  our  very  first  months  at  Hull-House  we  found 
it  much  easier  to  deal  with  the  first  generation  of 
crowded  city  life  than  with  the  second  or  third,  because 
it  is  more  natural  and  cast  in  a  simpler  mold.  The 
Italian  and  Bohemian  peasants  who  live  in  Chicago,  5 
still  put  on  their  bright  holiday  clothes  on  a  Sunday 
and  go  to  visit  their  cousins.  They  tramp  along  with  at 
least  a  suggestion  of  having  once  walked  over  plowed 
fields  and  breathed  country  air.  The  second  generation 
of  city  poor  too  often  have  no  holiday  clothes  and  con-  10 
sider  their  relations  a  ‘‘bad  lot.”  I  have  heard  a 
drunken  man  in  a  maudlin  stage,  babble  of  his  good 
country  mother  and  imagine  he  was  driving  the  cows 
home,  and  I  knew  that  his  little  son  who  laughed  loud 
at  him  would  be  drunk  earlier  in  life  and  would  have  1 5 
no  such  pastoral  interlude  to  his  ravings.  Hospitality 
still  survives  among  foreigners,  although  it  is  buried 
under  false  pride  among  the  poorest  Americans.  One 
thing  seemed  clear  in  regard  to  entertaining  immigrants: 
to  preserve  and  keep  whatever  of  value  their  past  life  20 
contained  and  to  bring  them  in  contact  with  a  better 
type  of  Americans.  For  several  years,  every  Saturday 


213 


2I4  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

evening  the  entire  families  of  our  Italian  neighbors  were 
our  guests.  These  evenings  were  very  popular  during 
our  first  winters  at  Hull-House.  Many  educated 
Italians  helped  us,  and  the  house  became  known  as  a 
5  place  where  Italians  were  welcome  and  where  national 
holidays  were  observed.  They  come  to  us  with  their 
petty  lawsuits,  sad  relics  of  the  vendetta ,  with  their 
incorrigible  boys,  with  their  hospital  cases,  with  their 
aspirations  for  American  clothes,  and  with  their  needs 
o  for  an  interpreter. 

An  editor  of  an  Italian  paper  made  a  genuine  con¬ 
nection  between  us  and  the  Italian  colony,  not  only 
with  the  Neapolitans  and  the  Sicilians  of  the  immediate 
neighborhood,  but  with  the  educated  connazionali 
5  throughout  the  city,  until  he  went  south  to  start  an 
agricultural  colony  in  Alabama,  in  the  establishment  of 
which  Hull-House  heartily  cooperated. 

Possibly  the  South  Italians  more  than  any  other  im¬ 
migrants  represent  the  pathetic  stupidity  of  agricultural 
o  people  crowded  into  city  tenements,  and  we  were  much 
gratified  when  thirty  peasant  families  were  induced  to 
move  upon  the  land  which  they  knew  so  well  how  to 
cultivate.  The  starting  of  this  colony,  however,  was  a 
very  expensive  affair  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  colon- 
5  ists  purchased  the  land  at  two  dollars  an  acre;  they 
needed  much  more  than  raw  land,  and  although  it  was 
possible  to  collect  the  small  sums  necessary  to  sustain 
them  during  the  hard  time  of  the  first  two  years,  we 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  215 

were  fully  convinced  that  undertakings  of  this  sort 
could  be  conducted  properly  only  by  colonization 
societies  such  as  England  has  established,  or,  better 
still,  by  enlarging  the  functions  of  the  Federal  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Immigration.  s 

An  evening  similar  in  purpose  to  the  one  devoted  to 
the  Italians  was  organized  for  the  Germans,  in  our 
first  year.  Owing  to  the  superior  education  of  our 
Teutonic  guests  and  the  clever  leading  of  a  cultivated 
German  woman,  these  evenings  reflected  something  of  10 
that  cozy  social  intercourse  which  is  found  in  its  per¬ 
fection  in  the  fatherland.  Our  guests  sang  a  great  deal 
in  the  tender  minor  of  the  German  folksong  or  in  the 
rousing  spirit  of  the  Rhine,  and  they  slowly  but  per¬ 
sistently  pursued  a  course  in  German  history  and  1 5 
literature,  recovering  something  of  that  poetry  and 
romance  which  they  had  long  since  resigned  with  other 
good  things.  We  found  strong  family  affection  between 
them  and  their  English-speaking  children,  but  their 
pleasures  were  not  in  common,  and  they  seldom  went  20 
out  together.  Perhaps  the  greatest  value  of  the  Settle¬ 
ment  to  them  was  in  placing  large  and  pleasant  rooms 
with  musical  facilities  at  their  disposal,  and  in  reviving 
their  almost  forgotten  enthusiasms.  I  have  seen  sons 
and  daughters  stand  in  complete  surprise  as  their  25 
mother’s  knitting  needles  softly  beat  time  to  the  song 
she  was  singing,  or  her  worn  face  turned  rosy  under  the 
hand-clapping  as  she  made  an  old-fashioned  courtesy 


216  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


at  the  end  of  a  German  poem.  It  was  easy  to  fancy  a 
growing  touch  of  respect  in  her  children’s  manner  to 
her,  and  a  rising  enthusiasm  for  German  literature  and 
reminiscence  on  the  part  of  all  the  family,  an  effort  to 
5  bring  together  the  old  life  and  the  new,  a  respect  for  the 
older  cultivation,  and  not  quite  so  much  assurance  that 
the  new  was  the  best. 

This  tendency  upon  the  part  of  the  older  immigrants 
to  lose  the  amenities  of  European  life  without  sharing 
o  those  of  America,  has  often  been  deplored  by  keen 
observers  from  the  home  countries.  When  Professor 
Masurek  of  Prague0  gave  a  course  of  lectures  in  the 
University  of  Chicago,  he  was  much  distressed  over  the 
materialism  into  which  the  Bohemians  of  Chicago  had 
5  fallen.  The  early  immigrants  had  been  so  stirred  by  the 
opportunity  to  own  real  estate,  an  appeal  perhaps  to 
the  Slavic  land  hunger,  and  their  energies  had  become 
so  completely  absorbed  in  money-making  that  all 
other  interests  had  apparently  dropped  away.  And  yet 
o  I  recall  a  very  touching  incident  in  connection  with  a 
lecture  Professor  Masurek  gave  at  Hull-House,  in 
which  he  had  appealed  to  his  countrymen  to  arouse 
themselves  from  this  tendency  to  fall  below  their  home 
civilization  and  to  forget  the  great  enthusiasm  which 
shad  united  them  into  the  Pan-Slavic  Movement.  A 
Bohemian  widow  who  supported  herself  and  her  two 
children  by  scrubbing,  hastily  sent  her  youngest  child 
to  purchase,  with  the  twenty-five  cents  which  was  to 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  217 

have  supplied  them  with  food  the  next  day,  a  bunch  of 
red  roses  which  she  presented  to  the  lecturer  in  appre¬ 
ciation  of  his  testimony  to  the  reality  of  the  things  of 
the  spirit. 

An  overmastering  desire  to  reveal  the  humbler  im-  5 
migrant  parents  to  their  own  children  lay  at  the  base  of 
what  has  come  to  be  called  the  Hull-House  Labor 
Museum.  This  was  first  suggested  to  my  mind  one 
early  spring  day  when  I  saw  an  old  Italian  woman,  her 
distaff  against  her  homesick  face,  patiently  spinning  a  10 
thread  by  the  simple  stick  spindle  so  reminiscent  of  all 
southern  Europe.  I  was  walking  down  Polk  Street, 
perturbed  in  spirit,  because  it  seemed  so  difficult  to 
come  into  genuine  relations  with  the  Italian  women 
and  because  they  themselves  so  often  lost  their  hold  1 5 
upon  their  Americanized  children.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  Hull-House  ought  to  be  able  to  devise  some  edu¬ 
cational  enterprise  which  should  build  a  bridge  between 
European  and  American  experiences  in  such  wise  as  to 
give  them  both  more  meaning  and  a  sense  of  relation.  20 
I  meditated  that  perhaps  the  power  to  see  life  as  a 
whole  is  more  needed  in  the  immigrant  quarter  of  a 
large  city  than  anywhere  else,  and  that  the  lack  of  this 
power  is  the  most  fruitful  source  of  misunderstanding 
between  European  immigrants  and  their  children,  as  2  5 
it  is  between  them  and  their  American  neighbors;  and 
why  should  that  chasm  between  fathers  and  sons, 
yawning  at  the  feet  of  each  generation,  be  made  so  un- 


2i 8  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


necessarily  cruel  and  impassable  to  these  bewildered 
immigrants?  Suddenly  I  looked  up  and  saw  the  old 
woman  with  her  distaff,  sitting  in  the  sun  on  the  steps 
of  a  tenement  house.  She  might  have  served  as  a  model 
s  for  one  of  Michael  Angelo’s  Fates,  but  her  face  bright¬ 
ened  as  I  passed  and,  holding  up  her  spindle  for  me  to 
see,  she  called  out  that  when  she  had  spun  a  little  more 
yarn,  she  would  knit  a  pair  of  stockings  for  her  god¬ 
daughter.  The  occupation  of  the  old  woman  gave  me 
othe  clew  that  was  needed.  Could  we  not  interest  the 
young  people  working  in  the  neighboring  factories  in 
these  older  forms  of  industry,  so  that,  through  their 
own  parents  and  grandparents,  they  would  find  a  dramat¬ 
ic  representation  of  the  inherited  resources  of  their  daily 
s occupation?  If  these  young  people  could  actually  see 
that  the  complicated  machinery  of  the  factory  had 
been  evolved  from  simple  tools,  they  might  at  least 
make  a  beginning  toward  that  education  which  Dr. 
Dewey0  defines  as  “a  continuing  reconstruction  of 
o  experience.  ”  They  might  also  lay  a  foundation  for 
reverence  of  the  past  which  Goethe  declares  to  be  the 
basis  of  all  sound  progress. 

My  exciting  walk  on  Polk  Street  was  followed  by 
many  talks  with  Dr.  Dewey  and  with  one  of  the  teach- 

s  ers  in  his  school  who  was  a  resident  at  Hull-House. 

% 

Within  a  month  a  room  was  fitted  up  to  which  we 
might  invite  those  of  our  neighbors  who  were  possessed 
of  old  crafts  and  who  were  eager  to  use  them. 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  219 

We  found  in  the  immediate  neighborhood,  at  least 
four  varieties  of  these  most  primitive  methods  of 
spinning  and  three  distinct  variations  of  the  same  spin¬ 
dle  in  connection  with  wheels.  It  was  possible  to  put 
these  seven  into  historic  sequence  and  order  and  to  5 
connect  the  whole  with  the  present  method  of  factory 
spinning.  The  same  thing  was  done  for  weaving,  and 
on  every  Saturday  evening  a  little  exhibit  was  made 
of  these  various  forms  of  labor  in  the  textile  industry. 
Within  one  room  a  Syrian  woman,  a  Greek,  an  Italian,  10 
a  Russian,  and  an  Irishwoman  enabled  even  the  most 
casual  observer  to  see  that  there  is  no  break  in  orderly 
evolution  if  we  look  at  history  from  the  industrial 
standpoint;  that  industry  develops  similarly  and  peace¬ 
fully  year  by  year  among  the  workers  of  each  nation,  1 5 
heedless  of  differences  in  language,  religion,  and 
political  experiences. 

\ 

upon  industrial  history.  I  remember  that  after  an 
interesting  lecture  upon  the  industrial  revolution  in  2I0 
England  and  a  portrayal  of  the  appalling  conditions 
throughout  the  weaving  districts  of  the  north,  which 
resulted  from  the  hasty  gathering  of  the  weavers  into 
the  new  towns,  a  Russian  tailor  in  the  audience  was 
moved  to  make  a  speech.  He  suggested  that  whereas  25 
time  had  done  much  to  alleviate  the  first  difficulties  in 
the  transition  of  weaving  from  hand  work  to  steam 
power,  that  in  the  application  of  steam  to  sewing  we 


And  then  we  grew  ambitious  and  arranged  lectures 


220  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


are  still  in  the  first  stages,  illustrated  by  the  isolated 
woman  who  tries  to  support  herself  by  hand  needle¬ 
work  at  home  until  driven  out  by  starvation,  as  many 
of  the  hand  weavers  had  been. 

5  The  historical  analogy  seemed  to  bring  a  certain  com¬ 
fort  to  the  tailor  as  did  a  chart  upon  the  wall,  showing 
the  infinitesimal  amount  of  time  that  steam  had  been 
applied  to  manufacturing  processes  compared  to  the 
centuries  of  hand  labor.  Human  progress  is  slow  and 
o  perhaps  never  more  cruel  than  in  the  advance  of  in¬ 
dustry,  but  is  not  the  worker  comforted  by  knowing 
that  other  historical  periods  have  existed  similar  to  the 
one  in  which  he  finds  himself,  and  that  the  readjustment 
may  be  shortened  and  alleviated  by  judicious  action; 
5  and  is  he  not  entitled  to  the  solace  which  an  artistic 
portrayal  of  the  situation  might  give  him?  I  remember 
the  evening  of  the  tailor’s  speech  that  I  felt  reproached 
because  no  poet  or  artist  has  endeared  the  sweaters’ 
victim  to  us  as  George  Eliot  has  made  us  love  the  be- 
olated  weaver,  Silas  Marner.  The  textile  museum  is 
connected  directly  with  the  basket  weaving,  sewing, 
millinery,  embroidery,  and  dressmaking  constantly 
being  taught  at  Hull-House,  and  so  far  as  possible  with 
the  other  educational  departments;  we  have  also  been 
5  able  to  make  a  collection  of  products,  of  early  imple¬ 
ments,  and  of  photographs  which  are  full  of  suggestion. 
Yet  far  beyond  its  direct  educational  value,  we  prize  it 
because  it  so  often  puts  the  immigrants  into  the  position 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  221 

of  teachers,  and  we  imagine  that  it  affords  them  a 
pleasant  change  from  the  tutelage  in  which  all  Ameri¬ 
cans,  including  their  own  children,  are  so  apt  to  hold 
them.  I  recall  a  number  of  Russian  women  working  in 
a  sewing-room  near  Hull-House,  who  heard  one  5 
Christmas  week  that  the  House  was  going  to  give  a 
party  to  which  they  might  come.  They  arrived  one 
afternoon  when,  unfortunately,  there  was  no  party  on 
hand  and,  although  the  residents  did  their  best  to 
entertain  them  with  impromptu  music  and  refresh-  1 
ments,  it  was  quite  evident  that  they  were  greatly 
disappointed.  Finally  it  was  suggested  that  they  be 
shown  the  Labor  Museum  —  where  gradually  the 
thirty  sodden,  tired  women  were  transformed.  They 
knew  how  to  use  the  spindles  and  were  delighted  to  find  1 
the  Russian  spinning  frame.  Many  of  them  had  never 
seen  the  spinning  wheel,  which  has  not  penetrated  to 
certain  parts  of  Russia,  and  they  regarded  it  as  a  new 
and  wonderful  invention.  They  turned  up  their  dresses 
to  show  their  homespun  petticoats;  they  tried  the  looms;  2 
they  explained  the  difficulty  of  the  old  patterns;  in 
short,  from  having  been  stupidly  entertained,  they 
themselves  did  the  entertaining.  Because  of  a  direct 
appeal  to  former  experiences,  the  immigrant  visitors 
were  able  for  the  moment  to  instruct  their  American  2 
hostesses  in  an  old  and  honored  craft,  as  was  indeed 
becoming  to  their  age  and  experience. 

In  some  such  ways  as  these  have  the  Labor  Museum 


222  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


and  the  shops  pointed  out  the  possibilities  which  Hull- 
House  has  scarcely  begun  to  develop,  of  demonstrating 
that  culture  is  an  understanding  of  the  long-established 
occupations  and  thoughts  of  men,  of  the  arts  with  which 
s  they  have  solaced  their  toil.  A  yearning  to  recover  for 
the  household  arts  something  of  their  early  sanctity  and 
meaning,  arose  strongly  within  me  one  evening  when  I 
was  attending  a  Passover  Feast0  to  which  I  had  been 
invited  by  a  Jewish  family  in  the  neighborhood,  where 
iothe  traditional  and  religious  significance  of  woman’s 
daily  activity  was  still  retained.  The  kosher  food  the 
Jewish  mother  spread  before  her  family  had  been  pre¬ 
pared  according  to  traditional  knowledge  and  with 
constant  care  in  the  use  of  utensils;  upon  her  had  fallen 
x  5  the  responsibility  to  make  all  ready  according  to 
Mosaic  instructions  that  the  great  crisis  in  a  religious 
history  might  be  fittingly  set  forth  by  her  husband  and 
son.  Aside  from  the  grave  religious  significance  in  the 
ceremony,  my  mind  was  filled  with  shifting  pictures  of 
20  woman’s  labor  with  which  travel  makes  one  familiar: 
the  Indian  women  grinding  grain  outside  of  their  huts 
as  they  sing  praises  to  the  sun  and  rain;  a  file  of  white- 
clad  Moorish  women  whom  I  had  once  seen  waiting 
their  turn  at  a  well  in  Tangiers;  south  Italian  women 
2  5  kneeling  in  a  row  along  the  stream  and  beating  their 
wet  clothes  against  the  smooth  white  stones;  the  milk¬ 
ing,  the  gardening,  the  marketing  in  thousands  of  ham- 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  223 

lets,  which  are  such  direct  expressions  of  the  solicitude 
and  affection  at  the  basis  of  all  family  life. 

There  has  been  some  testimony  that  the  Labor 
Museum  has  revealed  the  charm  of  woman’s  primitive 
activities.  I  recall  a  certain  Italian  girl  who  came  every  5 
Saturday  evening  to  a  cooking  class  in  the  same  building 
in  which  her  mother  spun  in  the  Labor  Museum  exhibit; 
and  yet  Angelina  always  left  her  mother  at  the  front 
door  while  she  herself  went  around  to  a  side  door  be¬ 
cause  she  did  not  wish  to  be  too  closely  identified  in  the  10 
eyes  of  the  rest  of  the  cooking  class  with  an  Italian 
woman  who  wore  a  kerchief  over  her  head,  uncouth 
boots,  and  short  petticoats.  One  evening,  however, 
Angelina  saw  her  mother  surrounded  by  a  group  of 
visitors  from  the  School  of  Education,  who  much  ad-  1 5 
mired  the  spinning,  and  she  concluded  from  their  con¬ 
versation  that  her  mother  was  “the  best  stick-spindle 
spinner  in  America.”  When  she  inquired  from  me  as 
to  the  truth  of  this  deduction,  I  took  occasion  to 
describe  the  Italian  village  in  which  her  mother  had  20 
lived,  something  of  her  free  life,  and  how,  because  of 
the  opportunity  she  and  the  other  women  of  the  village 
had  to  drop  their  spindles  over  the  edge  of  a  precipice, 
they  had  developed  a  skill  in  spinning  beyond  that  of 
the  neighboring  towns.  I  dilated  somewhat  on  the  25 
freedom  and  beauty  of  that  life  —  how  hard  it  must  be 
to  exchange  it  all  for  a  two-room  tenement,  and  to  give 


224  twenty  years  at  hull-house 

up  a  beautiful  homespun  kerchief  for  an  ugly  depart- 
.*  rrient  store  hat.  I  intimated  it  was  most  unfair  to  judge 
her  by  these  things  alone,  and  that  while  she  must 
depend  on  her  daughter  to  learn  the  new  ways,  she  also 
5  had  a  right  to  expect  her  daughter  to  know  something 
of  the  old  ways. 

That  which  I  could  not  convey  to  the  child  but  upon 
which  my  own  mind  persistently  dwelt,  was  that  her 
mother’s  whole  life  had  been  spent  in  a  secluded  spot 

1  o  under  the  rule  of  traditional  and  narrowly  localized 

observances,  until  her  very  religion  clung  to  local 
sanctities  —  to  the  shrine  before  which  she  had  always 
prayed,  to  the  pavement  and  walls  of  the  low  vaulted 
church  —  and  then  suddenly  she  was  torn  from  it  all 
1 5  and  literally  put  out  to  sea,  straight  away  from  the 
solid  habits  of  her  religious  and  domestic  life,  and  she 
now  walked  timidly  hut  with  poignant  sensibility  upon 
a  new  and  strange  shore. 

It  was  easy  to  see  that  the  thought  of  her  mother 
20  with  any  other  background  than  that  of  the  tenement 
was  new  to  Angelina  and  at  least  two  things  resulted: 
she  allowed  her  mother  to  pull  out  of  the  big  box  under 
the  bed  the  beautiful  homespun  garments  which  had 
been  previously  hidden  away  as  uncouth;  and  she 

2  5  openly  came  into  the  Labor  Museum  by  the  same  door 

as  did  her  mother,  proud  at  least  of  the  mastery  of  the 
craft  which  had  been  so  much  admired. 

A  club  of  necktie  workers  formerly  meeting  at  Hull- 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  225 

House  persistently  resented  any  attempt  on  the  part 
of  their  director  to  improve  their  minds.  The  president 
once  said  that  she  “wouldn’t  be  caught  dead  at  a 
lecture,”  that  she  came  to  the  club  “to  get  some  fun  out 
of  it,”  and  indeed  it  was  most  natural  that  she  should 
crave  recreation  after  a  hard  day’s  work.  One  evening 
I  saw  the  entire  club  listening  to  quite  a  stiff  lecture  in 
the  Labor  Museum  and  to  my  rather  wicked  remark 
to  the  president  that  I  was  surprised  to  see  her  enjoying 
a  lecture,  she  replied  that  she  did  not  call  this  a  lecture, 
she  called  this  “getting  next  to  the  stuff  you  work  with 
all  the  time.”  It  was  perhaps  the  sincerest  tribute  we 
have  ever  received  as  to  the  success  of  the  undertaking. 

The  Labor  Museum  continually  demanded  more 
space  as  it  was  enriched  by  a  fine  textile  exhibit  lent  by 
the  Field  Museum,0  and  later  by  carefully  selected 
specimens  of  basketry  from  the  Philippines.  The  shops 
have  finally  included  a  group  of  three  or  four  women, 
Irish,  Italian,  Danish,  who  have  become  a  permanent 
working  force  in  the  textile  department  which  has 
developed  into  a  self-supporting  industry  through  the 
sale  of  its  homespun  products. 

These  women  and  a  few  men,  who  come  to  the 
museum  to  utilize  their  European  skill  in  pottery,  metal, 
and  wood,  demonstrate  that  immigrant  colonies  might 
yield  to  our  American  life  something  very  valuable,  if 
their  resources  were  intelligently  studied  and  developed. 
1  recall  an  Italian,  who  had  decorated  the  doorposts  of 


226  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


his  tenement  with  a  beautiful  pattern  he  had  previously 
used  in  carving  the  reredos0  of  a  Neapolitan  church, 
who  was  “fired”  by  his  landlord  on  the  ground  of 
destroying  property.  His  feelings  were  hurt,  not  so 
s  much  that  he  had  been  put  out  of  his  house,  as  that  his 
work  had  been  so  disregarded;  and  he  said  that  when 
people  traveled  in  Italy  they  liked  to  look  at  wood 
carvings  but  that  in  America  “they  only  made  money 
out  of  you.” 

o  Sometimes  the  suppression  of  the  instinct  of  work¬ 
manship  is  followed  by  more  disastrous  results.  A 
Bohemian,  whose  little  girl  attended  classes  at  Hull- 
House,  in  one  of  his  periodic  drunken  spells  had  literally 
almost  choked  her  to  death,  and  later  had  committed 
5  suicide  when  in  delirium  tremens.  His  poor  wife,  who 
stayed  a  week  at  Hull-House  after  the  disaster  until  a 
new  tenement  could  be  arranged  for  her,  one  day  showed 
me  a  gold  ring  which  her  husband  had  made  for  their 
betrothal.  It  exhibited  the  most  exquisite  workman- 
oship,  and  she  said  that  although  in  the  old  country  he 
had  been  a  goldsmith,  in  America  he  had  for  twenty 
years  shoveled  coal  in  a  furnace  room  of  a  large  manu¬ 
facturing  plant;  that  whenever  she  saw  one  of  his 
“restless  fits,”  which  preceded  his  drunken  periods, 
s “coming  on,”  if  she  could  provide  him  with  a  bit  of 
metal  and  persuade  him  to  stay  at  home  and  work  at 
it,  he  was  all  right  and  the  time  passed  without  disaster, 
but  that  “nothing  else  would  do  it.”  This  story  threw 
a  flood  of  light  upon  the  dead  man’s  struggle  and  on  the 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  227 

stupid  maladjustment  which  had  broken  him  down. 
Why  had  we  never  been  told?  Why  had  our  interest  in 
the  remarkable  musical  ability  of  his  child  blinded  us 
to  the  hidden  artistic  ability  of  the  father?  We  had  J 
forgotten  that  a  long-established  occupation  may  form  5 
the  very  foundations  of  the  moral  life,  that  the  art  with 
which  a  man  has  solaced  his  toil  may  be  the  salvation 
of  his  uncertain  temperament. 

There  are  many  examples  of  touching  fidelity  to 
immigrant  parents  on  the  part  of  their  grown  children:  10 
a  young  man,  who  day  after  day,  attends  ceremonies 
which  no  longer  express  his  religious  convictions  and 
who  makes  his  vain  effort  to  interest  his  Russian  Jewish 
father  in  social  problems;  a  daughter  who  might  earn 
much  more  money  as  a  stenographer  could  she  work  1 5 
from  Monday  morning  till  Saturday  night,  but  who 
quietly  and  docilely  makes  neckties  for  low  wages  be¬ 
cause  she  can  thus  abstain  from  work  Saturdays  to 
please  her  father;  these  young  people,  like  poor  Maggie 
Tulliver,0  through  many  painful  experiences  have  20 
reached  the  conclusion  that  pity,  memory,  and  faithful¬ 
ness  are  natural  ties  with  paramount  claims. 

This  faithfulness,  however,  is  sometimes  ruthlessly 
imposed  upon  by  immigrant  parents  who,  eager  for 
money  and  accustomed  to  the  patriarchal  authority  of  2  5 
peasant  households,  hold  their  children  in  a  stern 
bondage  which  requires  a  surrender  of  all  their  wages 
and  concedes  no  time  or  money  for  pleasures. 

There  are  many  convincing  illustrations  that  this 


228  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


parental  harshness  often  results  in  juvenile  delinquency. 
A  Polish  boy  of  seventeen  came  to  Hull-House  one  day 
to  ask  a  contribution  of  fifty  cents  “towards  a  flower 
piece  for  the  funeral  of  an  old  Hull-House  club  boy.” 
s  A  few  questions  made  it  clear  that  the  object  was 
fictitious,  whereupon  the  boy  broke  down  and  half 
defiantly  stated  that  he  wanted  to  buy  two  twenty-five 
cent  tickets,  one  for  his  girl  and  one  for  himself,  to  a 
dance  of  the  Benevolent  Social  Twos;  that  he  hadn’t  a 
o  penny  of  his  own  although  he  had  worked  in  a  brass 
foundry  for  three  years  and  had  been  advanced  twice, 
because  he  always  had  to  give  his  pay  envelope  un¬ 
opened  to  his  father;  “just  look  at  the  clothes  he  buys 
me”  was  his  concluding  remark, 
s  Perhaps  the  girls  are  held  even  more  rigidly.  In  a 
recent  investigation  of  two  hundred  working  girls  it 
was  found  that  only  five  per  cent  had  the  use  of  their 
own  money  and  that  sixty-two  per  cent  turned  in  all 
they  earned,  literally  every  penny,  to  their  mothers.  It 
owas  through  this  little  investigation  that  we  first  knew 
Marcella,  a  pretty  young  German  girl  who  helped  her 
widowed  mother  year  after  year  to  care  for  a  large 
family  of  younger  children.  She  was  content  for  the 
most  part  although  her  mother’s  old-country  notions  of 
s  dress  gave  her  but  an  infinitesimal  amount  of  her  own 
wages  to  spend  on  her  clothes,  and  she  was  quite 
sophisticated  as  to  proper  dressing  because  she  sold 
silk  in  a  neighborhood  department  store.  Her  mother 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  229 

approved  of  the  young  man  who  was  showing  her 
various  attentions  and  agreed  that  Marcella  should 
accept  his  invitation  to  a  ball,  but  would  allow  her  not 
a  penny  towards  a  new  gown  to  replace  one  impossibly 
plain  and  shabby.  Marcella  spent  a  sleepless  night  and  5 
wept  bitterly,  although  she  well  knew  that  the  doctor’s 
bill  for  the  children’s  scarlet  fever  was  not  yet  paid. 
The  next  day  as  she  was  cutting  off  three  yards  of 
shining  pink  silk,  the  thought  came  to  her  that  it  would 
make  her  a  fine  new  waist  to  wear  to  the  ball.  She  wist-  1  o 
fully  saw  it  wrapped  ip  paper  and  carelessly  stuffed 
into  the  muff  of  the  purchaser,  when  suddenly  the 
parcel  fell  upon  the  floor.  No  one  was  looking  and 
quick  as  a  flash  the  girl  picked  it  up  and  pushed  it  into 
her  blouse.  The  theft  was  discovered  by  the  relentless  1 5 
department  store  detective  who,  for  “the  sake  of  the 
example,”  insisted  upon  taking  the  case  into  court. 
The  poor  mother  wept  bitter  tears  over  this  downfall 
of  her  “frommes  Madchen”  and  no  one  had  the  heart 
to  tell  her  of  her  own  blindness.  20 

I  know  a  Polish  boy  whose  earnings  were  all  given  to 
his  father  who  gruffly  refused  all  requests  for  pocket 
money.  One  Christmas  his  little  sisters,  having  been 
told  by  their  mother  that  they  were  too  poor  to  have 
any  Christmas  presents,  appealed  to  the  big  brother  as  25 
to  one  who  was  earning  money  of  his  own.  Flattered  by 
the  implication,  but  at  the  same  time  quite  impecunious, 
the  night  before  Christmas  he  nonchalantly  walked 


- 

i 


230  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

through  a  neighboring  department  store  and  stole  a 
manicure  set  for  one  little  sister  and  a  string  of  beads  for 
the  other.  He  was  caught  at  the  door  by  the  house 
detective  as  one  of  those  children  whom  each  local 
5  department  store  arrests  in  the  weeks  before  Christmas 
at  the  daily  rate  of  eight  to  twenty.  The  youngest  of 
these  offenders  are  seldom  taken  into  court  but  are 
either  sent  home  with  a  warning  or  turned  over  to  the 
officers  of  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association.  Most 
oof  these  premature  law  breakers  are  in  search  of 
Americanized  clothing  and  others  are  only  looking  for 
playthings.  They  are  all  distracted  by  the  profusion 
and  variety  of  the  display,  and  their  moral  sense  is  con¬ 
fused  by  the  general  air  of  open-handedness. 

5  These  disastrous  efforts  are  not  unlike  those  of  many 
younger  children  who  are  constantly  arrested  for  petty 
thieving  because  they  are  too  eager  to  take  home  food 
or  fuel  which  will  relieve  the  distress  and  need  they  so 
constantly  hear  discussed.  The  coal  on  the  wagons, 
othe  vegetables  displayed  in  front  of  the  grocery  shops, 
the  very  wooden  blocks  in  the  loosened  street  paving 
are  a  challenge  to  their  powers  to  help  out  at  home.  A 
Bohemian  boy  who  was  out  on  parole  from  the  old 
detention  home  of  the  Juvenile  Court  itself,  brought 
5  back  five  stolen  chickens  to  the  matron  for  Sunday 
dinner,  saying  that  he  knew  the  Committee  were  hav¬ 
ing  a  hard  time  to  fill  up  so  many  kids  and  perhaps 
these  fowl  would  help  out.  ”  The  honest  immigrant 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  231 

parents,  totally  ignorant  of  American  laws  and  munici¬ 
pal  regulations,  often  send  a  child  to  pick  up  coal  on 
the  railroad  tracks  or  to  stand  at  three  o'clock  in  the 
morning  before  the  side  door  of  a  restaurant  which 
gives  away  broken  food,  or  to  collect  grain  for  the  5 
chickens  at  the  base  of  elevators  and  standing  cars. 
The  latter  custom  accounts  for  the  large  number  of  boys 
arrested  for  breaking  the  seals  on  grain  freight  cars.  It 
is  easy  for  a  child  thus  trained  to  accept  the  proposition 
of  a  junk  dealer  to  bring  him  bars  of  iron  stored  in  10 
freight  yards.  Four  boys  quite  recently  had  thus 
carried  away  and  sold  to  one  man,  two  tons  of  iron. 

Four  fifths  of  the  children  brought  into  the  Juvenile 
Court  in  Chicago  are  the  children  of  foreigners.  The 
Germans  are  the  greatest  offenders,  Polish  next.  Do  1 5 
their  children  suffer  from  the  excess  of  virtue  in  those 
parents  so  eager  to  own  a  house  and  lot?  One  often 
sees  a  grasping  parent  in  the  court,  utterly  broken  down 
when  the  Americanized  youth  who  has  been  brought  to 
grief  clings  as  piteously  to  his  peasant  father  as  if  he  20 
were  still  a  frightened  little  boy  in  the  steerage. 

Many  of  these  children  have  come  to  grief  through 
their  premature  fling  into  city  life,  having  thrown  off 
parental  control  as  they  have  impatiently  discarded 
foreign  ways.  Boys  of  ten  and  twelve  will  refuse  to  2  5 
sleep  at  home,  preferring  the  freedom  of  an  old  brewery 
vault  or  an  empty  warehouse  to  the  obedience  required 
by  their  parents,  and  for  days  these  boys  will  live  on  the 


232  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

milk  and  bread  which  they  steal  from  the  back  porches 
after  the  early  morning  delivery.  Such  children  com¬ 
plain  that  there  is  “no  fun”  at  home.  One  little  chap 
who  was  given  a  vacant  lot  to  cultivate  by  the  City 
5  Garden  Association,  insisted  upon  raising  only  popcorn 
and  tried  to  present  the  entire  crop  to  Hull-House  “to 
be  used  for  the  parties,”  with  the  stipulation  that  he 
would  have  “to  be  invited  every  single  time.”  Then 
there  are  little  groups  of  dissipated  young  men  who 
o  pride  themselves  upon  their  ability  to  live  without 
working,  and  who  despise  all  the  honest  and  sober  ways 
of  their  immigrant  parents.  They  are  at  once  a  menace 
and  a  center  of  demoralization.  Certainly  the  bewil¬ 
dered  parents,  unable  to  speak  English  and  ignorant  of 
s  the  city,  whose  children  have  disappeared  for  da}^s  or 
weeks,  have  often  come  to  Hull-House,  evincing  that 
agony  which  fairly  separates  the  marrow  from  the  bone, 
as  if  they  had  discovered  a  new  type  of  suffering,  devoid 
of  the  healing  in  familiar  sorrows.  It  is  as  if  they  did 
o  not  know  how  to  search  for  the  children  without  the 
assistance  of  the  children  themselves.  Perhaps  the  most 
pathetic  aspect  of  such  cases  is  their  revelation  of  the 
premature  dependence  of  the  older  and  wiser  upon  the 
young  and  foolish,  which  is  in  itself  often  responsible 
s  for  the  situation  because  it  has  given  the  children  an 
undue  sense  of  their  own  importance  and  a  false  security 
that  they  can  take  care  of  themselves. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  Italian  girl  who  has  had  lessons 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  233 

in  cooking  at  the  public  school,  will  help  her  mother  to 
connect  the  entire  family  with  American  food  and 
household  habits.  That  the  mother  has  never  baked 
bread  in  Italy  —  only  mixed  it  in  her  own  house  and 
then  taken  it  out  to  the  village  oven  —  makes  all  the 
more  valuable  her  daughter’s  understanding  of  the 
complicated  cooking  stove.  The  same  thing  is  true  of 
the  girl  who  learns  to  sew  in  the  public  school,  and  more 
than  anything  else,  perhaps,  of  the  girl  who  receives 
the  first  simple  instruction  in  the  care  of  little  children 
—  that  skillful  care  which  every  tenement-house  baby 
requires  if  he  is  to  be  pulled  through  his  second  summer. 
As  a  result  of  this  teaching  I  recall  a  young  girl  who 
carefully  explained  to  her  Italian  mother  that  the 
reason  the  babies  in  Italy  were  so  healthy  and  the  babies 
in  Chicago  were  so  sickly,  was  not,  as  her  mother  had 
firmly  insisted,  because  her  babies  in  Italy  had  goat’s 
milk  and  her  babies  in  America  had  cow’s  milk,  but 
because  the  milk  in  Italy  was  clean  and  the  milk  in 
Chicago  was  dirty.  She  said  that  when  you  milked 
your  own  goat  before  the  door,  you  knew  that  the  milk 
was  clean,  but  when  you  bought  milk  from  the  grocery 
store  after  it  had  been  carried  for  many  miles  in  the 
country,  you  couldn’t  tell  whether  or  not  it  was  fit  for 
the  baby  to  drink  until  the  men  from  the  City  Hall,  who 
had  watched  it  all  the  way,  said  that  it  was  all  right. 

Thus  through  civic  instruction  in  the  public  schools, 
the  Italian  woman  slowly  became  urbanized  in  the 


234  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

sense  in  which  the  word  was  used  by  her  own  Latin 
ancestors,  and  thus  the  habits  of  her  entire  family  were 
modified.  The  public  schools  in  the  immigrant  colonies 
deserve  all  the  praise  as  Americanizing  agencies  which 
scan  be  bestowed  upon  them,  and  there  is  little  doubt 
that  the  fast-changing  curriculum  in  the  direction  of  the 
vacation-school  experiments  will  react  still  more  direct¬ 
ly  upon  such  households. 

It  is  difficult  to  write  of  the  relation  of  the  older  and 
omost  foreign-looking  immigrants  to  the  children  of 
other  people,  —  the  Italians  whose  fruit  carts  are  upset 
simply  because  they  are  “dagoes,”  or  the  Russian 
peddlers  who  are  stoned  and  sometimes  badly  injured 
because  it  has  become  a  code  of  honor  in  a  gang  of  boys 
s  to  thus  express  their  derision.  The  members  of  a  Pro¬ 
tective  Association  of  Jewish  Peddlers  organized  at 
Hull-House,  related  daily  experiences  in  which  old  age 
had  been  treated  with  such  irreverence,  cherished 
dignity  with  such  disrespect,  that  a  listener  caught  the 
o  passion  of  Lear  in  the  old  texts,  as  a  platitude  enun¬ 
ciated  by  a  man  who  discovers  in  it  his  own  experience 
thrills  us  as  no  unfamiliar  phrases  can  possibly  do.  The 
Greeks  are  filled  with  amazed  rage  when  their  very 
name  is  flung  at  them  as  an  opprobrious  epithet.  Doubt- 
s  less  these  difficulties  would  be  much  minimized  in 
America,  if  we  faced  our  own  race  problem  with  courage 
and  intelligence,  and  these  very  Mediterranean  im¬ 
migrants  might  give  us  valuable  help.  Certainly  th  ey 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  235 

are  less  conscious  than  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  color  dis¬ 
tinctions,  perhaps  because  of  their  traditional  familiarity 
with  Carthage  and  Egypt.  They  listened  with  respect 
and  enthusiasm  to  a  scholarly  address  delivered  by 
Professor  Du  Bois°  at  Hull-House  on  a  Lincoln’s  birth¬ 
day,  with  apparently  no  consciousness  of  that  race 
difference  wTiich  color  seems  to  accentuate  so  absurdly, 
and  upon  my  return  from  various  conferences  held  in 
the  interest  of  “the  advancement  of  colored  people,” 
I  have  had  many  illuminating  conversations  with  my 
cosmopolitan  neighbors. 

The  celebration  of  national  events  has  always  been 
a  source  of  new  understanding  and  companionship  with 
the  members  of  the  contiguous  foreign  colonies,  not  only 
between  them  and  their  American  neighbors  but  be¬ 
tween  them  and  their  own  children.  One  of  our  earliest 
Italian  events  was  a  rousing  commemoration  of  Gari¬ 
baldi’s  birthday,0  and  his  imposing  bust,  presented  to 
Hull-House  that  evening,  was  long  the  chief  ornament 
of  our  front  hall.  It  called  forth  great  enthusiasm  from 
the  connazionali  whom  Ruskin  calls,  not  the  “common 
people”  of  Italy,  but  the  “companion  people”  because 
of  their  power  for  swift  sympathy. 

A  huge  Hellenic  meeting  held  at  Hull-House,  in 
which  the  achievements  of  the  classic  period  were  set 
forth  both  in  Greek  and  English  by  scholars  of  well- 
known  repute,  brought  us  into  a  new  sense  of  fellowship 
with  all  our  Greek  neighbors.  As  the  mayor  of  Chicago 


236  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

was  seated  upon  the  right  hand  of  the  dignified  senior 
priest  of  the  Greek  Church  and  they  were  greeted 
alternately  in  the  national  hymns  of  America  and 
Greece,  one  felt  a  curious  sense  of  the  possibility  of 
s  transplanting  to  new  and  crude  Chicago,  some  of  the 
traditions  of  Athens  itself,  so  deeply  cherished  in  the 
hearts  of  this  group  of  citizens. 

The  Greeks  indeed  gravely  consider  their  traditions 
as  their  most  precious  possession  and  more  than  once  in 
o  meetings  of  protest  held  by  the  Greek  colony  against 
the  aggressions  of  the  Bulgarians  in  Macedonia,  I  have 
heard  it  urged  that  the  Bulgarians  are  trying  to  estab¬ 
lish  a  protectorate,  not  only  for  their  immediate  ad¬ 
vantage,  but  that  they  may  claim  a  glorious  history  for 
s their  “ barbarous  country.”  It  is  said  that  on  the  basis 
of  this  protectorate,  they  are  already  teaching  in  their 
schools  that  Alexander  the  Great  was  a  Bulgarian  and 
that  it  will  be  but  a  short  time  before  they  claim  Aris¬ 
totle  himself,  an  indignity  the  Greeks  will  never  suffer! 
o  To  me  personally  the  celebration  of  the  hundredth 
anniversary  of  Mazzini’s  birth  was  a  matter  of  great 
interest.  Throughout  the  world  that  day  Italians  who 
believed  in  a  United  Italy  came  together.  They  re¬ 
called  the  hopes  of  this  man  who,  with  all  his  devotion 
s  to  his  country,  was  still  more  devoted  to  humanity  and 
who  dedicated  to  the  workingmen  of  Italy  an  appeal 
so  philosophical,  so  filled  with  a  yearning  for  righteous¬ 
ness,  that  it  transcended  all  national  boundaries  and 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR  CHILDREN  237 

became  a  bugle  call  for  “The  Duties  of  Man.  ”  A  copy 
of  this  document  was  given  to  every  school  child  in  the 
public  schools  of  Italy  on  this  one  hundredth  anniver¬ 
sary,  and  as  the  Chicago  branch  of  the  Society  of 
Young  Italy  marched  into  our  largest  hall  and  presented  5 
to  Hull-House  an  heroic  bust  of  Mazzini,  I  found  my¬ 
self  devoutly  hoping  that  the  Italian  youth,  who  have 
committed  their  future  to  America,  might  indeed  be¬ 
come  “the  Apostles  of  the  fraternity  of  nations”  and 
that  our  American  citizenship  might  be  built  without  10 
disturbing  these  foundations  which  were  laid  of  old 
time. 


CHAPTER  XII 
Tolstoyism 

The  administration  of  charity  in  Chicago  during  the 
winter  following  the  World’s  Fair  had  been  of  necessity 
most  difficult  for,  although  large  sums  had  been  given 
to  the  temporary  relief  organization  which  endeavored 
s  to  care  for  the  thousands  of  destitute  strangers  strand¬ 
ed  in  the  city,  we  all  worked  under  a  sense  of  desperate 
need  and  a  paralyzing  consciousness  that  our  best 
efforts  were  most  inadequate  to  the  situation. 

During  the  many  relief  visits  I  paid  that  winter  in 
o  tenement  houses  and  miserable  lodgings,  I  was  con¬ 
stantly  shadowed  by  a  certain  sense  of  shame  that  I 
should  be  comfortable  in  the  midst  of  such  distress. 
This  resulted  at  times  in  a  curious  reaction  against  all 
the  educational  and  philanthropic  activites  in  which  I 
shad  been  engaged.  In  the  face  of  the  desperate  hunger 
and  need,  these  could  not  but  seem  futile  and  super¬ 
ficial.  The  hard  winter  in  Chicago  had  turned  the 
thoughts  of  many  of  us  to  these  stern  matters.  A 
young  friend  of  mine  who  came  daily  to  Hull-House, 
o  consulted  me  in  regard  to  going  into  the  paper  ware¬ 
house  belonging  to  her  father  that  she  might  there  sort 
rags  with  the  Polish  girls;  another  young  girl  took  a 

238 


TOLSTOYISM 


239 


place  in  a  sweatshop  for  a  month,  doing  her  work  so 
simply  and  thoroughly  that  the  proprietor  had  no 
notion  that  she  had  not  been  driven  there  by  need;  still 
two  others  worked  in  a  shoe  factory;  —  and  all  this 
happened  before  such  adventures  were  undertaken  in  5 
order  to  procure  literary  material.  It  was  in  the  follow¬ 
ing  winter  that  the  pioneer  effort  in  this  direction, 
Walter  Wyckoff’s  account  of  his  vain  attempt  to  find 
work  in  Chicago,  compelled  even  the  sternest  business 
man  to  drop  his  assertion  that  “any  man  can  find  work  10 
if  he  wants  it.’5 

The  dealing  directly  with  the  simplest  human  wants 
may  have  been  responsible  for  an  impression  which  I 
carried  about  with  me  almost  constantly  for  a  period 
of  two  years  and  which  culminated  finally  in  a  visit  to  15 
Tolstoy,  —  that  the  Settlement,  or  Hull-House  at 
least,  was  a  mere  pretense  and  travesty  of  the  simple 
impulse  “to  live  with  the  poor”  so  long  as  the  residents 
did  not  share  the  common  lot  of  hard  labor  and  scant 
fare.  20 

M 

Actual  experience  had  left  me  in  much  the  same  state  v 
of  mind  I  had  been  in  after  reading  Tolstoy’s  “What  to 
Do,”  which  is  a  description  of  his  futile  efforts  to  re¬ 
lieve  the  unspeakable  distress  and  want  in  the  Moscow 
winter  of  1881,  and  his  inevitable  conviction  that  only  25 
he  who  literally  shares  his  own  shelter  and  food  with 
the  needy  can  claim  to  have  served  them. 

Doubtless  it  is  much  easier  to  see  “what  to  do”  in 


24o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

rural  Russia,  where  all  the  conditions  tend  to  make  the 
contrast  as  broad  as  possible  between  peasant  labor 
and  noble  idleness,  than  it  is  to  see  “what  to  do”  in 
the  interdependencies  of  the  modern  industrial  city, 
s  But  for  that  very  reason  perhaps,  Tolstoy’s  clear  state¬ 
ment  is  valuable  for  that  type  of  conscientious  person 
in  every  land  who  finds  it  hard,  not  only  to  walk  in  the 
path  of  righteousness,  but  to  discover  where  the  path 
lies. 

o  I  had  read  the  books  of  Tolstoy  steadily  all  the  years 
since  “My  Religion”  had  come  into  my  hands  im¬ 
mediately  after  I  left  college.  The  reading  of  that  book 
had  made  clear  that  men’s  poor  little  efforts  to  do  right 
are  put  forth  for  the  most  part  in  the  chill  of  self-dis- 
s  trust;  I  became  convinced  that  if  the  new  social  order 
ever  came,  it  would  come  by  gathering  to  itself  all  the 
pathetic  human  endeavor  which  had  indicated  the 
forward  direction.  But  I  was  most  eager  to  know 
whether  Tolstoy’s  undertaking  to  do  his  daily  share  of 
othe  physical  labor  of  the  world,  that  labor  which  is  “so 
disproportionate  to  the  unnourished  strength”  of  those 
by  whom  it  is  ordinarily  performed,  had  brought  him 
\  peace! 

I  had  time  to  review  carefully  many  things  in  my 
5  mind  during  the  long  days  of  convalescence  following 
an  illness  of  typhoid  fever  which  I  suffered  in  the 
autumn  of  1895.  The  illness  was  so  prolonged  that  my 
health  was  most  unsatisfactory  during  the  following 


TOLSTOYISM 


241 


winter,  and  the  next  May  I  went  abroad  with  my 
friend,  Miss  Smith,  to  effect  if  possible  a  more  complete 
recovery. 

The  prospect  of  seeing  Tolstoy  filled  me  with  the 
hope  of  finding  a  clew  to  the  tangled  affairs  of  city 
poverty.  I  was  but  one  of  thousands  of  our  contempor¬ 
aries  who  were  turning  towards  this  Russian,  not  as  to 
a  seer  —  his  message  is  much  too  confused  and  con¬ 
tradictory  for  that  —  but  as  to  a  man  who  has  had  the 
ability  to  lift  his  life  to  the  level  of  his  conscience,  to 
translate  his  theories  into  action. 

Our  first  few  weeks  in  England  were  most  stimulating. 
A  dozen  years  ago  London  still  showed  traces  of  “that 
exciting  moment  in  the  life  of  the  nation  when  its 
youth  is  casting  about  for  new  enthusiasms,”  but  it 
evinced  still  more  of  that  British  capacity  to  perform 
the  hard  work  of  careful  research  and  self-examination 
which  must  precede  any  successful  experiments  in 
social  reform.  Of  the  varied  groups  and  individuals 
whose  suggestions  remained  with  me  for  years,  I  recall 
perhaps  as  foremost  those  members  of  the  new  London 
County  Council  whose  far-reaching  plans  for  the  better¬ 
ment  of  London  could  not  but  enkindle  enthusiasm. 
It  was  a  most  striking  expression  of  that  effort  which 
would  place  beside  the  refinement  and  pleasure  of  the 
rich,  a  new  refinement  and  a  new  pleasure  born  of  the 
commonwealth  and  the  common  joy  of  all  the  citizens, 
that  at  this  moment  they  prized  the  municipal  pleasure 


242  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE’ 

boats  upon  the  Thames  no  less  than  the  extensive 
schemes  for  the  municipal  housing  of  the  poorest 
people.  Ben  Tillet, °  who  was  then  an  alderman,  “the 
docker  sitting  beside  the  duke,”  took  me  in  a  rowboat 
5  down  the  Thames  on  a  journey  made  exciting  by  the 
hundreds  of  dockers  who  cheered  him  as  we  passed  one 
wharf  after  another  on  our  way  to  his  home  at  Green¬ 
wich;  John  Burns0  showed  us  his  wonderful  civic  ac¬ 
complishments  at  Battersea,  the  plant  turning  street 
o  sweepings  into  cement  pavements,  the  technical  school 
teaching  boys  brick  laying  and  plumbing,  and  the 
public  bath  in  which  the  children  of  the  Board  School 
were  receiving  a  swimming  lesson  —  these  measures 
anticipating  our  achievements  in  Chicago  by  at  least  a 
s  decade  and  a  half.  The  new  Education  Bill,  which  was 
destined  to  drag  on  for  twelve  years  before  it  developed 
into  the  children’s  charter,  was  then  a  storm  center  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  Miss  Smith  and  I  were  much 
pleased  to  be  taken  to  tea  on  the  Parliament  terrace  by 
oits  author,  Sir  John  Gorst,°  although  we  were  quite 
bewildered  by  the  arguments  we  heard  there  for  church 
schools  versus  secular. 

We  heard  Keir  Hardie0  before  a  large  audience  of 
workingmen  standing  in  the  open  square  of  Canning 
sTown,  outline  the  great  things  to  be  accomplished  by 
the  then  new  Labor  Party,  and  we  joined  the  vast  body 
of  men  in  the  booming  hymn 

When  wilt  Thou  save  the  people, 

O  God  of  Mercy,  when! 


TOLSTOYISM 


H3 


finding  it  hard  to  realize  that  we  were  attending  a 
political  meeting.  It  seemed  that  moment  as  if  the 
hopes  of  democracy  were  more  likely  to  come  to  pass 
on  English  soil  than  upon  our  own.  Robert  Blatch- 
ford’s0  stirring  pamphlets  were  in  every  one’s  hands,  and  5 
a  reception  given  by  Karl  Marx’s0  daughter,  Mrs. 
Aveling,  to  Liebknecht0  before  he  returned  to  Germany 
to  serve  a  prison  term  for  his  lese  majeste  speech  in  the 
Reichstag,  gave  us  a  glimpse  of  the  old-fashioned 
orthodox  Socialist  who  had  not  yet  begun  to  yield  to  10 
the  biting  ridicule  of  Bernard  Shaw°  although  he 
flamed  in  their  midst  that  evening. 

Octavia  Hill°  kindly  demonstrated  to  us  the  principles 
upon  which  her  well-founded  business  of  rent  collecting 
was  established,  and  with  pardonable  pride  showed  us  15 
the  Red  Cross  Square  with  its  cottages,  marvelously 
picturesque  and  comfortable,  on  two  sides,  and  on  the 
third  a  public  hall  and  common  drawing-room  for  the 
use  of  all  the  tenants;  the  interior  of  the  latter  had  been 
decorated  by  pupils  of  Walter  Crane0  with  mural  fres-  20 
coes  portraying  the  heroism  in  the  life  of  the  modern 
workingman. 

While  all  this  was  warmly  human,  we  also  had  op¬ 
portunities  to  see  something  of  a  group  of  men  and 
women  who  were  approaching  the  social  problem  from  25 
the  study  of  economics;  among  others  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Sidney  Webb  who  were  at  work  on  their  “Industrial 
Democracy”0;  Mr.  John  Hobson0  who  was  lecturing  on 
the  evolution  of  modern  capitalism. 


244  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

We  followed  factory  inspectors  on  a  round  of  duties 
performed  with  a  thoroughness  and  a  trained  intelli¬ 
gence  which  were  a  revelation  of  the  possibilities  of 
public  service.  When  it  came  to  visiting  Settlements, 
5  we  were  at  least  reassured  that  they  were  not  falling 
into  identical  lines  of  effort.  Canon  Ingram,0  who  has 
since  become  Bishop  of  London,  was  then  warden  of 
Oxford  House  and  in  the  midst  of  an  experiment  which 
pleased  me  greatly,  the  more  because  it  was  carried  on 
o  by  a  churchman.  Oxford  House  had  hired  all  the  con¬ 
cert  halls  —  vaudeville  shows  we  later  called  them  in 
Chicago  —  which  were  found  in  Bethnal  Green,  for 
every  Saturday  night.  The  residents  had  censored  the 
programs,  which  they  were  careful  to  keep  popular, 
s  and  any  workingman  who  attended  a  show  in  Bethnal 
Green  on  a  Saturday  night,  and  thousands  of  them  did, 
heard  a  program  the  better  for  this  effort. 

One  evening  in  University  Hall  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward,0  who  had  just  returned  from  Italy,  described  the 
o  effect  of  the  Italian  salt  tax  in  a  talk  which  was  evident¬ 
ly  one  in  a  series  of  lectures  upon  the  economic  wrongs 
which  pressed  heaviest  upon  the  poor;  at  Browning 
House,0  at  the  moment,  they  were  giving  prizes  to  those 
of  their  costermonger  neighbors  who  could  present  the 
5  best  cared-for  donkeys,  and  the  warden,  Herbert  Stead, 
exhibited  almost  the  enthusiasm  of  his  well-known 
brother  for  that  crop  of  kindliness  which  can  be 
garnered  most  easily  from  the  acreage  where  human 


TOLSTOYISM 


beings  grow  the  thickest;  at  the  Bermondsey  Settlement 
they  were  rejoicing  that  their  University  Extension 
students  had  successfully  passed  the  examinations  for 
the  University  of  London.  The  entire  impression  re¬ 
ceived  in  England  of  research,  of  scholarship,  of  organ-  5 
ized  public  spirit,  was  in  marked  contrast  to  the  im¬ 
pressions  of  my  next  visit  in  1900,  when  the  South 
African  War°  had  absorbed  the  enthusiasm  of  the  nation 
and  the  wrongs  at  “the  heart  of  the  empire ”  were  dis¬ 
regarded  and  neglected. 

London,  of  course,  presented  sharp  differences  to 
Russia  where  social  conditions  were  written  in  black 
and  white  with  little  shading,  like  a  demonstration  of 
the  Chinese  proverb,  “Where  one  man  lives  in  luxury, 
another  is  dying  of  hunger.”  1 

The  fair  of  Nijni-Novgorod°  seemed  to  take  us  to  the 
very  edge  of  a  civilization  so  remote  and  eastern  that 
the  merchants  brought  their  curious  goods  upon  the 
backs  of  camels  or  on  strange  craft  riding  at  anchor  on 
the  broad  Volga.  But  even  here  our  letter  of  intro-  2 
duction  to  Korolenko,0  the  novelist,  brought  us  to  a 
realization  of  that  strange  mingling  of  a  remote  past 
and  a  self-conscious  present  which  Russia  presents  on 
every  hand.  This  same  contrast  was  also  shown  by  the 
pilgrims  trudging  on  pious  errands  to  monasteries,  to  2 
tombs,  and  to  the  Holy  Land  itself,  with  their  bleeding 
feet  bound  in  rags  and  thrust  into  bast  sandals,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  by  the  revolutionists  even  then  ad- 


2 46  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

vocating  a  Republic  which  should  obtain  not  only  in 
political  but  also  in  industrial  affairs. 

We  had  letters  of  introduction  to  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Aylmer  Maude0  of  Moscow,  since  well  known  as  the 
5  translators  of  “Resurrection”  and  others  of  Tolstoy’s 
later  works,  who  at  that  moment  were  on  the  eve  of 
leaving  Russia  in  order  to  form  an  agricultural  colony 
in  South  England  where  they  might  support  themselves 
by  the  labor  of  their  hands.  We  gladly  accepted  Mr. 
o  Maude’s  offer  to  take  us  to  Yasnaya  Polyana  and  to 
introduce  us  to  CountTolstoy,  and  never  did  a  disciple 
journey  towards  his  master  with  more  enthusiasm  than 
did  our  guide.  When,  however,  Mr.  Maude  actually 
presented  Miss  Smith  and  myself  to  Count  Tolstoy, 
s  knowing  well  his  master’s  attitude  toward  philanthropy, 
he  endeavored  to  make  Hull-House  appear  much  more 
noble  and  unique  than  I  should  have  ventured  to  do. 

Tolstoy,  standing  by  clad  in  his  peasant  garb,  listened 
gravely  but,  glancing  distrustfully  at  the  sleeves  of  my 
o  traveling  gown,  which  unfortunately  at  that  season  were 
monstrous  in  size,  he  took  hold  of  an  edge  and  pulling 
out  one  sleeve  to  an  interminable  breadth,  said  quite 
simply  that  “  there  was  enough  stuff  on  one  arm  to  make 
a  frock  for  a  little  girl,”  and  asked  me  directly  if  I  did 
snot  find  “such  a  dress”  a  “barrier  to  the  people.”  I 
was  too  disconcerted  to  make  a  very  clear  explanation, 
although  I  tried  to  say  that  monstrous  as  my  sleeves 
were  they  did  not  compare  in  size  with  those  of  the 


TOLSTOYISM 


247 


working  girls  in  Chicago  and  that  nothing  would  more 
effectively  separate  me  from  ‘'the  people”  than  a  cotton 
blouse  following  the  simple  lines  of  the  human  form; 
even  if  I  had  wished  to  imitate  him  and  “dress  as  a 
peasant,”  it  would  have  been  hard  to  choose  which  5 
peasant  among  the  thirty-six  nationalities  we  had  re¬ 
cently  counted  in  our  ward.  Fortunately  the  countess 
came  to  my  rescue  with  a  recital  of  her  former  attempts 
to  clothe  hypothetical  little  girls  in  yards  of  material 
cut  from  a  train  and  other  superfluous  parts  of  her  best  10 
gown  until  she  had  been  driven  to  a  firm  stand  which 
she  advised  me  to  take  at  once.  But  neither  Countess 
Tolstoy  nor  any  other  friend  was  on  hand  to  help  me 
out  of  my  predicament  later,  when  I  was  asked  who 
“fed”  me,  and  how  did  I  obtain  “shelter”?  Upon  my  15 
reply  that  a  farm  a  hundred  miles  from  Chicago  supplied 
me  with  the  necessities  of  life,  I  fairly  anticipated  the 
next  scathing  question:  “So  you  are  an  absentee  land¬ 
lord?  Do  you  think  you  will  help  the  people  more  by 
adding  yourself  to  the  crowded  city  than  you  would  by  20 
tilling  your  own  soil?”  This  new  sense  of  discomfort 
over  a  failure  to  till  my  own  soil  was  increased  when 
Tolstoy’s  second  daughter  appeared  at  the  five-o’clock 
tea  table  set  under  the  trees,  coming  straight  from  the 
harvest  field  where  she  had  been  working  with  a  group  2  5 
of  peasants  since  five  o’clock  in  the  morning,  not  pre¬ 
tending  to  work  but  really  taking  the  place  of  a  peasant 
woman  who  had  hurt  her  foot.  She  was  plainly  much 


248  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

exhausted  but  neither  expected  nor  received  sympathy 
from  the  members  of  a  family  who  were  quite  accus¬ 
tomed  to  see  each  other  carry  out  their  convictions  in 
spite  of  discomfort  and  fatigue.  The  martyrdom  of 
5  discomfort,  however,  was  obviously  much  easier  to  bear 
than  that  to  which,  even  to  the  eyes  of  the  casual 
visitor,  Count  Tolstoy  daily  subjected  himself,  for  his 
study  in  the  basement  of  the  conventional  dwelling, 
with  its  short  shelf  of  battered  books  and  its  scythe  and 
o  spade  leaning  against  the  wall,  had  many  times  lent 
itself  to  that  ridicule  which  is  the  most  difficult  form  of 
martyrdom. 

That  summer  evening  as  we  sat  in  the  garden  with  a 
group  of  visitors  from  Germany,  from  England,  and 
s  America,  who  had  traveled  to  the  remote  Russian 
village  that  they  might  learn  of  this  man,  one  could  not 
forbear  the  constant  inquiry  to  one’s  self,  as  to  why  he 
was  so  regarded  as  sage  and  saint  that  this  party  of 
people  should  be  repeated  each  day  of  the  year.  It 
o  seemed  to  me  then  that  we  were  all  attracted  by  this 
sermon  of  the  deed,  because  Tolstoy  had  made  the  one 
supreme  personal  effort,  one  might  almost  say  the  one 
frantic  personal  effort,  to  put  himself  into  right  relations 
with  the  humblest  people,  with  the  men  who  tilled  his 
5  soil,  blacked  his  boots  and  cleaned  his  stables.  Doubt¬ 
less  the  heaviest  burden  of  our  contemporaries  is  a  con¬ 
sciousness  of  a  divergence  between  our  democratic 
theory  on  the  one  hand,  that  working  people  have  a 


TOLSTOYISM 


249 


right  to  the  intellectual  resources  of  society,  and  the 
actual  fact  on  the  other  hand,  that  thousands  of  them 
are  so  overburdened  with  toil  that  there  is  no  leisure 
nor  energy  left  for  the  cultivation  of  the  mind.  We 
constantly  suffer  from  the  strain  and  indecision  of  be¬ 
lieving  this  theory  and  acting  as  if  we  did  not  believe 
it,  and  this  man  who  years  before  had  tried  ‘‘to  get  off 
the  backs  of  the  peasants,”  who  had  at  least  simplified 
his  life  and  worked  with  his  hands,  had  come  to  be  a 
prototype  to  many  of  his  generation. 

Doubtless  all  of  the  visitors  sitting  in  the  Tolstoy 
garden  that  evening  had  excused  themselves  from  labor¬ 
ing  with  their  hands  upon  the  theory  that  they  were 
doing  something  more  valuable  for  society  in  other 
ways.  No  one  among  our  contemporaries  has  dissented 
from  this  point  of  view  so  violently  as  Tolstoy  himself, 
and  yet  no  man  might  so  easily  have  excused  himself 
from  hard  and  rough  work  on  the  basis  of  his  genius  and 
of  his  intellectual  contributions  to  the  world.  So  far, 
however,  from  considering  his  time  too  valuable  to  be 
spent  in  labor  in  the  field  or  in  making  shoes,  our  great 
host  was  too  eager  to  know  life  to  be  willing  to  give  up 
this  companionship  of  mutual  labor.  One  instinctively 
found  reasons  why  it  was  easier  for  a  Russian  than  for 
the  rest  of  us,  to  reach  this  conclusion;  the  Russian 
peasants  have  a  proverb  which  says:  “Labor  is  the 
house  that  love  lives  in,”  by  which  they  mean  that  no 
two  people  nor  group  of  people,  can  come  into  affec- 


250  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

tionate  relations  with  each  other  unless  they  carry  on 
together  a  mutual  task,  and  when  the  Russian  peasant 
talks  of  labor  he  means  labor  on  the  soil,  or,  to  use  the 
phrase  of  the  great  peasant,  BonderefF,  “bread  labor.” 
5  Those  monastic  orders  founded  upon  agricultural  labor, 
those  philosophical  experiments  like  Brook  Farm  and 
many  another,  have  attempted  to  reduce  to  action  this 
same  truth.  Tolstoy  himself  has  written  many  times 
his  own  convictions  and  attempts  in  this  direction,  per- 
ohaps  never  more  tellingly  than  in  the  description  of 
Lavin’s  morning  spent  in  the  harvest  field,  when  he  lost 
his  sense  of  grievance  and  isolation  and  felt  a  strange 
new  brotherhood  for  the  peasants,  in  proportion  as  the 
rhythmic  motion  of  his  scythe  became  one  with  theirs. 
5  At  the  long  dinner  table  laid  in  the  garden  were  the 
various  traveling  guests,  the  grown-up  daughters,  and 
the  younger  children  with  their  governess.  The  countess 
presided  over  the  usual  European  dinner  served  by 
men,  but  the  count  and  the  daughter  who  had  worked 
oall  day  in  the  fields,  ate  only  porridge  and  black  bread 
and  drank  only  kvas,  the  fare  of  the  hay-making 
peasants.  Of  course  we  are  all  accustomed  to  the  fact 
that  those  who  perform  the  heaviest  labor,  eat  the 
coarsest  and  simplest  fare  at  the  end  of  the  day,  but  it 
5  is  not  often  that  we  sit  at  the  same  table  with  them 
while  we  ourselves  eat  the  more  elaborate  food  prepared 
by  some  one  else’s  labor.  Tolstoy  ate  his  simple  supper 
without  remark  or  comment  upon  the  food  his  family 


TOLSTOYISM 


2Sl 


and  guests  preferred  to  eat,  assuming  that  they,  as  well 
as  he,  had  settled  the  matter  with  their  own  consciences. 

The  Tolstoy  household  that  evening  was  much  inter¬ 
ested  in  the  fate  of  a  young  Russian  spy  who  had  re¬ 
cently  come  to  Tolstoy  in  the  guise  of  a  country  school¬ 
master,  in  order  to  obtain  a  copy  of  “Life,”  which  had 
been  interdicted  by  the  censor  of  the  press.  After  spend¬ 
ing  the  night  in  talk  with  Tolstoy,  the  spy  had  gone 
away  with  a  copy  of  the  forbidden  manuscript  but, 
unfortunately  for  himself,  having  become  converted  to 
Tolstoy’s  views  he  had  later  made  a  full  confession  to 
the  authorities  and  had  been  exiled  to  Siberia.  Tolstoy, 
holding  that  it  was  most  unjust  to  exile  the  disciple 
while  he,  the  author  of  the  book,  remained  at  large,  had 
pointed  out  this  inconsistency  in  an  open  letter  to  one 
of  the  Moscow  newspapers.  The  discussion  of  this  in¬ 
cident,  of  course,  opened  up  the  entire  subject  of  non- 
resistance,  and  curiously  enough  I  was  disappointed  in 
Tolstoy’s  position  in  the  matter.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
he  made  too  great  a  distinction  between  the  use  of 
physical  force  and  that  moral  energy  which  can  override 
another’s  differences  and  scruples  with  equal  ruthless¬ 
ness. 

With  that  inner  sense  of  mortification  with  which  one 
finds  one’s  self  at  difference  with  the  great  authority,  I 
recalled  the  conviction  of  the  early  Hull-House  residents 
that  whatever  of  good  the  Settlement  had  to  offer  should 
be  put  into  positive  terms,  that  we  might  live  with  op- 


252  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

position  to  no  man,  with  recognition  of  the  good  in  every 
man,  even  the  most  wretched.  We  had  often  departed 
from  this  principle,  but  had  it  not  in  every  case  been  a 
confession  of  weakness,  and  had  we  not  always  found 
5  antagonism  a  foolish  and  unwarrantable  expenditure  of 
energy? 

The  conversation  at  dinner  and  afterwards,  although 
conducted  with  animation  and  sincerity,  for  the 
moment  stirred  vague  misgivings  within  me.  Was 
i o Tolstoy  more  logical  than  life  warrants?  Could  the 
wrongs  of  life  be  reduced  to  the  terms  of  unrequited 
labor  and  all  be  made  right  if  each  person  performed 
the  amount  necessary  to  satisfy  his  own  wants?  Was  it 
not  always  easy  to  put  up  a  strong  case  if  one  took  the 

1  s  naturalistic  view  of  life?  But  what  about  the  historic 

view,  the  inevitable  shadings  and  modifications  which 
life  itself  brings  to  its  own  interpretation?  Miss  Smith 
and  I  took  a  night  train  back  to  Moscow  in  that  tumult 
of  feeling  which  is  always  produced  by  contact  with  a 
20  conscience  making  one  more  of  those  determined  efforts 
to  probe  to  the  very  foundations  of  the  mysterious 
world  in  which  we  find  ourselves.  A  horde  of  perplexing 
questions,  concerning  those  problems  of  existence  of 
which  in  happier  moments  we  catch  but  fleeting  glimp- 

2  5ses  and  at  which  we  even  then  stand  aghast,  pursued  us 

relentlessly  on  the  long  journey  through  the  great  wheat 
plains  of  South  Russia,  through  the  crowded  Ghetto0  of 
Warsaw,  and  finally  into  the  smiling  fields  of  Germany 


TOLSTOYISM 


253 


where  the  peasant  men  and  women  were  harvesting  the 
grain.  I  remember  that  through  the  sight  of  those  toil¬ 
ing  peasants,  I  made  a  curious  connection  between  the 
bread  labor  advocated  by  Tolstoy  and  the  comfort  the 
harvest  fields  are  said  to  have  once  brought  to  Luther  5 
when,  much  perturbed  by  many  theological  difficulties, 
he  suddenly  forgot  them  all  in  a  gush  of  gratitude  for 
mere  bread,  exclaiming,  “How  it  stands,  that  golden 
yellow  corn,  on  its  fine  tapered  stem;  the  meek  earth,  at 
God’s  kind  bidding,  has  produced  it  once  again!”  At  10 
least  the  toiling  poor  had  this  comfort  of  bread  labor, 
and  perhaps  it  did  not  matter  that  they  gained  it  un¬ 
knowingly  and  painfully,  if  only  they  walked  in  the 
path  of  labor.  In  the  exercise  of  that  curious  power 
possessed  by  the  theorists  to  inhibit  all  experiences  1 5 
which  do  not  enhance  his  doctrine,  I  did  not  permit 
myself  to  recall  that  which  I  knew  so  well  —  that 
exigent  and  unremitting  labor  grants  the  poor  no  leisure 
even  in  the  supreme  moments  of  human  suffering  and 
that  “all  griefs  are  lighter  with  bread.”  20 

I  may  have  wished  to  secure  this  solace  for  myself  at 
the  cost  of  the  least  possible  expenditure  of  time  and 
energy,  for  during  the  next  month  in  Germany,  when  I 
read  everything  of  Tolstoy’s  that  had  been  translated 
into  English,  German,  or  French,  there  grew  up  in  my  25 
mind  a  conviction  that  what  I  ought  to  do  upon  my  re¬ 
turn  to  Hull-House,  was  to  spend  at  least  two  hours 
every  morning  in  the  little  bakery  which  we  had  recent- 


254  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ly  added  to  the  equipment  of  our  coffee-house.  Two 
hours’  work  would  be  but  a  wretched  compromise,  but 
it  was  hard  to  see  how  I  could  take  more  time  out  of 
each  day.  I  had  been  taught  to  bake  bread  in  my  child- 
5  hood  not  only  as  a  household  accomplishment,  but  be¬ 
cause  my  father,  true  to  his  miller’s  tradition,  had  in¬ 
sisted  that  each  one  of  his  daughters  on  her  twelfth 
birthday  must  present  him  with  a  satisfactory  wheat 
loaf  of  her  own  baking,  and  he  was  most  exigent  as  to 
othe  quality  of  this  test  loaf.  What  could  be  more  in 
keeping  with  my  training  and  tradition  than  baking 
bread?  I  did  not  quite  see  how  my  activity  would  fit  in 
with  that  of  the  German  union  baker  who  presided  over 
the  Hull-House  bakery  but  all  such  matters  were 
s  secondary  and  certainly  could  be  arranged.  It  may  be 
that  I  had  thus  to  pacify  my  aroused  conscience  before 
I  could  settle  down  to  hear  Wagner’s  “Ring”  at  Bey- 
reuth;  it  may  be  that  I  had  fallen  a  victim  to  the 
phrase,  “bread  labor”;  but  at  any  rate  I  held  fast  to 
othe  belief  that  I  should  do  this,  through  the  entire 
journey  homeward,  on  land  and  sea,  until  I  actually  ar¬ 
rived  in  Chicago  when  suddenly  the  whole  scheme 
seemed  to  me  as  utterly  preposterous  as  it  doubtless 
was.  The  half  dozen  people  invariably  waiting  to  see 
5  me  after  breakfast,  the  piles  of  letters  to  be  opened  and 
answered,  the  demand  of  actual  and  pressing  human 
wants  —  were  these  all  to  be  pushed  aside  and  asked 
to  wait  while  I  saved  my  soul  by  two  hours’  work  at 
baking  bread? 


TOLSTOYISM 


255 


Although  my  resolution  was  abandoned,  this  may  be 
the  best  place  to  record  the  efforts  of  more  doughty 
souls  to  carry  out  Tolstoy’s  conclusions.  It  was  per¬ 
haps  inevitable  that  Tolstoy  colonies  should  be  founded, 
although  Tolstoy  himself  has  always  insisted  that  each  5 
man  should  live  his  life  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  place 
in  which  he  was  born.  The  visit  Miss  Smith  and  I  made 
a  year  or  two  later  to  a  colony  in  one  of  the  southern 
States,  portrayed  for  us  most  vividly  both  the  weakness 
and  the  strange  august  dignity  of  the  Tolstoy  position.  10 
The  colonists  at  Commonwealth  held  but  a  short  creed. 
They  claimed  in  fact  that  the  difficulty  is  not  to  state 
truth  but  to  make  moral  conviction  operative  upon 
actual  life,  and  they  announced  it  their  intention  “to 
obey  the  teachings  of  Jesus  in  all  matters  of  labor  and  1 5 
the  use  of  property.”  They  would  thus  transfer  the 
vindication  of  creed  from  the  church  to  the  open  field, 
from  dogma  to  experience. 

The  day  Miss  Smith  and  I  visited  the  Commonwealth 
colony  of  threescore  souls,  they  were  erecting  a  house  20 
for  the  family  of  a  one-legged  man,  consisting  of  a  wife 
and  nine  children,  who  had  come  the  week  before  in  a 
forlorn  prairie  schooner  from  Arkansas.  As  this  was  the 
largest  family  the  little  colony  contained,  the  new  house 
was  to  be  the  largest  yet  erected.  Upon  our  surprise  at  25 
this  literal  giving  “to  him  that  asketh,”  we  inquired  if 
the  policy  of  extending  food  and  shelter  to  all  who  ap¬ 
plied,  without  test  of  creed  or  ability,  might  not  result 
in  the  migration  of  all  the  neighboring  poorhouse  popu- 


256  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

lation  into  the  colony.  We  were  told  that  this  actually 
had  happened  during  the  winter  until  the  colony  fare 
of  corn  meal  and  cow  peas  had  proved  so  unattractive 
that  the  paupers  had  gone  back,  for  even  the  poorest  of 
s  the  southern  poorhouses  occasionally  supplied  bacon 
with  the  pone  if  only  to  prevent  scurvy,  from  which  the 
colonists  themselves  had  suffered.  The  difficulty  of  the 
poorhouse  people  had  thus  settled  itself  by  the  sheer 
poverty  of  the  situation,  a  poverty  so  biting  that  the 
oonly  ones  willing  to  face  it  were  those  sustained  by  a 
conviction  of  its  righteousness.  The  fields  and  gardens 
were  being  worked  by  an  editor,  a  professor,  a  clergy¬ 
man,  as  well  as  by  artisans  and  laborers,  the  fruit  there¬ 
of  to  be  eaten  by  themselves  and  their  families  or  by 
5  any  other  families  who  might  arrive  from  Arkansas. 
The  colonists  were  very  conventional  in  matters  of 
family  relationship  and  had  broken  with  society  only  in 
regard  to  the  conventions  pertaining  to  labor  and 
property.  We  had  a  curious  experience  at  the  end  of 
othe  day  when  we  were  driven  into  the  nearest  town. 
We  had  taken  with  us  as  a  guest  the  wife  of  the  president 
of  the  colony,  wishing  to  give  her  a  dinner  at  the  hotel, 
because  she  had  girlishly  exclaimed  during  a  conver¬ 
sation  that  at  times  during  the  winter  she  had  become 
5  so  eager  to  hear  good  music  that  it  had  seemed  to  her 
as  if  she  were  actually  hungry  for  it,  almost  as  hungry 
as  she  was  for  a  beefsteak.  Yet  as  we  drove  away  we 
had  the  curious  sensation  that  while  the  experiment  was 


TOLSTOYISM 


257 


obviously  coming  to  an  end,  in  the  midst  of  its  priva¬ 
tions  it  yet  embodied  the  peace  of  mind  which  comes 
to  him  who  insists  upon  the  logic  of  life  whether  it  is 
reasonable  or  not  —  the  fanatic’s  joy  in  seeing  his  own 
formula  translated  into  action.  At  any  rate,  as  we 
reached  the  commonplace  southern  town  of  workaday 
men  and  women,  for  one  moment  its  substantial  build¬ 
ings,  its  solid  brick  churches,  its  ordered  streets,  divided 
into  those  of  the  rich  and  those  of  the  poor,  seemed 
much  more  unreal  to  us  than  the  little  struggling  colony 
we  had  left  behind.  We  repeated  to  each  other  that  in 
all  the  practical  judgments  and  decisions  of  life,  we 
must  part  company  with  logical  demonstration;  that  if 
we  stop  for  it  in  each  case,  we  can  never  go  on  at  all; 
and  yet,  in  spite  of  this,  when  conscience  does  become 
the  dictator  of  the  daily  life  of  a  group  of  men,  it  forces 
our  admiration  as  no  other  modern  spectacle  has  power 
to  do.  It  seemed  but  a  mere  incident  that  this  group 
should  have  lost  sight  of  the  facts  of  life  in  their  earnest 
endeavor  to  put  to  the  test  the  things  of  the  spirit. 

I  knew  little  about  the  colony  started  by  Mr.  Maude 
at  Purleigh  containing  several  of  Tolstoy’s  followers 
who  were  not  permitted  to  live  in  Russia,  and  we  did 
not  see  Mr.  Maude  again  until  he  came  to  Chicago  on 
his  way  from  Manitoba,  whither  he  had  transported  the 
second  group  of  Dukhobors,  a  religious  sect  who  had 
interested  all  of  Tolstoy’s  followers  because  of  their 
literal  acceptance  of  non-resistance  and  other  Christian 


258  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

doctrines  which  are  so  strenuously  advocated  by 
Tolstoy.  It  was  for  their  benefit  that  Tolstoy  had 
finished  and  published  “Resurrection,”  breaking 
through  his  long-kept  resolution  against  novel  writing. 

5  After  the  Dukhobors  were  settled  in  Canada,  of  the  five 
hundred  dollars  left  from  the  “Resurrection”  funds, 
one  half  was  given  to  Hull-House.  It  seemed  possible 
to  spend  this  fund  only  for  the  relief  of  the  most  primi¬ 
tive  wants  of  food  and  shelter  on  the  part  of  the  most 
i  o  needy  families. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Public  Activities  and  Investigations 

One  of  the  striking  features  of  our  neighborhood 
twenty  years  ago,  and  one  to  which  we  never  became 
reconciled,  was  the  presence  of  huge  wooden  garbage 
boxes  fastened  to  the  street  pavement  in  which  the 
undisturbed  refuse  accumulated  day  by  day.  The  5 
system  of  garbage  collecting  was  inadequate  through¬ 
out  the  city  but  it  became  the  greatest  menace  in  a 
ward  such  as  ours,  where  the  normal  amount  of  waste 
was  much  increased  by  the  decayed  fruit  and  vegetables 
discarded  by  the  Italian  and  Greek  fruit  peddlers,  and  10 
by  the  residuum  left  over  from  the  piles  of  filthy  rags 
which  were  fished  out  of  the  city  dumps  and  brought  to 
the  homes  of  the  rag  pickers  for  further  sorting  and 
washing. 

The  children  of  our  neighborhood  twenty  years  ago  1 5 
played  their  games  in  and  around  these  huge  garbage 
boxes.  They  were  the  first  objects  that  the  toddling 
child  learned  to  climb;  their  bulk  afforded  a  barricade 
and  their  contents  provided  missiles  in  all  the  battles 
of  the  older  boys;  and  finally  they  became  the  seats  20 
upon  which  absorbed  lovers  held  enchanted  converse. 
We  are  obliged  to  remember  that  all  children  eat  every- 


259 


26o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


thing  which  they  find  and  that  odors  have  a  curious  and 
intimate  power  of  entwining  themselves  into  our  tender- 
est  memories,  before  even  the  residents  of  Hull-House 
can  understand  their  own  early  enthusiasm  for  the  re- 
s  moval  of  these  boxes  and  the  establishment  of  a  better 
system  of  refuse  collection. 

It  is  easy  for  even  the  most  conscientious  citizen  of 
Chicago  to  forget  the  foul  smells  of  the  stockyards  and 
the  garbage  dumps,  when  he  is  living  so  far  from  them 
othat  he  is  only  occasionally  made  conscious  of  their 
existence  but  the  residents  of  a  Settlement  are  perforce 
constantly  surrounded  by  them.  During  our  first  three 
years  on  Halsted  Street,  we  had  established  a  small  in¬ 
cinerator  at  Hull-House  and  we  had  many  times  re- 
s  ported  the  untoward  conditions  of  the  ward  to  the  City 
Hall.  We  had  also  arranged  many  talks  for  the  im¬ 
migrants,  pointing  out  that  although  a  woman  may 
sweep  her  own  doorway  in  her  native  village  and  allow 
the  refuse  to  innocently  decay  in  the  open  air  and  sun- 
o  shine,  in  a  crowded  city,  quarter,  if  the  garbage  is  not 
properly  collected  and  destroyed,  a  tenement-house 
mother  may  see  her  children  sicken  and  die,  and  that 
the  immigrants  must  therefore,  not  only  keep  their  own 
houses  clean,  but  must  also  help  the  authorities  to  keep 
s  the  city  clean. 

Possibly  our  efforts  slightly  modified  the  worst  con¬ 
ditions  but  they  still  remained  intolerable,  and  the 
fourth  summer  the  situation  became  for  me  absolutely 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  261 


desperate  when  I  realized  in  a  moment  of  panic  that  my 
delicate  little  nephew  for  whom  I  was  guardian,  could 
not  be  with  me  at  Hull-House  at  all  unless  the  sickening 
odors  were  reduced.  I  may  well  be  ashamed  that  other 
delicate  children  who  were  torn  from  their  families, 
not  into  boarding  school  but  into  eternity,  had  not  long 
before  driven  me  to  effective  action.  Under  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  the  first  man  who  came  as  a  resident  to  Hull- 
House  we  began  a  systematic  investigation  of  the  city 
system  of  garbage  collection,  both  as  to  its  efficiency  in 
other  wards  and  its  possible  connection  with  the  death 
rate  in  the  various  wards  of  the  city. 

The  Hull-House  Woman’s  Club  had  been  organized 
the  year  before  by  the  resident  kindergartner  who  had 
first  inaugurated  a  mothers’  meeting.  The  members 
came  together,  however,  in  quite  a  new  way  that  sum¬ 
mer  when  we  discussed  with  them  the  high  death  rate 
so  persistent  in  our  ward.  After  several  club  meetings 
devoted  to  the  subject,  despite  the  fact  that  the  death 
rate  rose  highest  in  the  congested  foreign  colonies  and 
not  in  the  streets  in  which  most  of  the  Irish  American 
club  women  lived,  twelve  of  their  number  undertook  in 
connection  with  the  residents,  to  carefully  investigate 
the  condition  of  the  alleys.  During  August  and  Septem¬ 
ber  the  substantiated  reports  of  violations  of  the  law 
sent  in  from  Hull-House  to  the  health  department  were 
one  thousand  and  thirty-seven.  For  the  club  woman 
who  had  finished  a  long  day’s  work  of  washing  or  ironing 


262  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


followed  by  the  cooking  of  a  hot  supper,  it  would  have 
been  much  easier  to  sit  on  her  doorstep  during  a  summer 
evening  than  to  go  up  and  down  ill-kept  alleys  and  get 
into  trouble  with  her  neighbors  over  the  condition  of 
s  their  garbage  boxes.  It  required  both  civic  enterprise 
and  moral  conviction  to  be  willing  to  do  this  three  even¬ 
ings  a  week  during  the  hottest  and  most  uncomfortable 
months  of  the  year.  Nevertheless,  a  certain  number  of 
women  persisted,  as  did  the  residents,  and  three  city 
o  inspectors  in  succession  were  transferred  from  the  ward 
because  of  unsatisfactory  services.  Still  the  death  rate 
remained  high  and  the  condition  seemed  little  improved 
throughout  the  next  winter.  In  sheer  desperation,  the 
following  spring  when  the  city  contracts  were  awarded 
5  for  the  removal  of  garbage,  with  the  backing  of  two  well- 
known  business  men,  I  put  in  a  bid  for  the  garbage  re¬ 
moval  of  the  nineteenth  ward.  My  paper  was  thrown 
out  on  a  technicality  but  the  incident  induced  the 
mayor  to  appoint  me  the  garbage  inspector  of  the  ward, 
o  The  salary  was  a  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  the 
loss  of  that  political  ‘‘plum”  made  a  great  stir  among 
the  politicians.  The  position  was  no  sinecure  whether 
regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  getting  up  at  six  in 
the  morning  to  see  that  the  men  were  early  at  work;  or 
s  of  following  the  loaded  wagons,  uneasily  dropping  their 
contents  at  intervals,  to  their  dreary  destination  at  the 
dump;  or  of  insisting  that  the  contractor  must  increase 
the  number  of  his  wagons  from  nine  to  thirteen  and 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  263 

from  thirteen  to  seventeen,  although  he  assured  me  that 
he  lost  money  on  every  one  and  that  the  former  in¬ 
spector  had  let  him  off  with  seven;  or  of  taking  careless 
landlords  into  court  because  they  would  not  provide  the 
proper  garbage  receptacles;  or  of  arresting  the  tenant 
who  tried  to  make  the  garbage  wagons  carry  away  the 
contents  of  his  stable. 

With  the  two  or  three  residents  who  nobly  stood  by, 
we  set  up  six  of  those  doleful  incinerators  which  are 
supposed  to  burn  garbage  with  the  fuel  collected  in  the 
alley  itself.  The  one  factory  in  town  which  could  utilize 
old  tin  cans  was  a  window  weight  factory,  and  we 
deluged  that  with  ten  times  as  many  tin  cans  as  it  could 
use  —  much  less  would  pay  for.  We  made  desperate 
attempts  to  have  the  dead  animals  removed  by  the 
contractor  who  was  paid  most  liberally  by  the  city  for 
that  purpose  but  who,  we  slowly  discovered,  always 
made  the  police  ambulances  do  the  work,  delivering  the 
carcasses  upon  freight  cars  for  shipment  to  a  soap  factory 
in  Indiana  where  they  were  sold  for  a  good  price  al¬ 
though  the  contractor  himself  was  the  largest  stock¬ 
holder  in  the  concern.  Perhaps  our  greatest  achieve¬ 
ment  was  the  discovery  of  a  pavement  eighteen  inches 
under  the  surface  in  a  narrow  street,  although  after  it 
was  found  we  triumphantly  discovered  a  record  of  its 
existence  in  the  city  archives.  The  Italians  living  on  the 
street  were  much  interested  but  displayed  little  aston¬ 
ishment,  perhaps  because  they  were  accustomed  to  see 


264  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

buried  cities  exhumed.  This  pavement  became  the 
casus  belli0  between  myself  and  the  street  commissioner 
when  I  insisted  that  its  restoration  belonged  to  him, 
after  I  had  removed  the  first  eight  inches  of  garbage. 
5  The  matter  was  finally  settled  by  the  mayor  himself, 
who  permitted  me  to  drive  him  to  the  entrance  of  the 
street  in  what  the  children  called  my  ‘‘garbage  phaeton” 
and  who  took  my  side  of  the  controversy. 

A  graduate  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  who  had 
o  done  some  excellent  volunteer  inspection  in  both 
Chicago  and  Pittsburg,  became  my  deputy  and  per¬ 
formed  the  work  in  a  most  thoroughgoing  manner  for 
three  years.  During  the  last  two  she  was  under  the 
regime  of  civil  service,  for  in  1895,  t0  t^ie  great  j°y  of 
5  many  citizens,  the  Illinois  legislature  made  that  possible. 

Many  of  the  foreign-born  women  of  the  ward  were 
much  shocked  by  this  abrupt  departure  into  the  ways  of 
men,  and  it  took  a  great  deal  of  explanation  to  convey 
the  idea  even  remotely  that  if  it  were  a  womanly  task 
oto  go  about  in  tenement  houses  in  order  to  nurse  the 
sick,  it  might  be  quite  as  womanly  to  go  through  the 
same  district  in  order  to  prevent  the  breeding  of  so- 
called  “filth  diseases.  ”  While  some  of  the  women  enthu¬ 
siastically  approved  the  slowly  changing  conditions  and 
5  saw  that  their  housewifely  duties  logically  extended  to 
the  adjacent  alleys  and  streets,  they  yet  were  quite 
certain  that  ‘"it  was  not  a  lady’s  job.”  A  revelation  of 
this  attitude  was  made  one  day  in  a  conversation  which 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  265 

the  inspector  heard  vigorously  carried  on  in  a  laundry. 
One  of  the  employees  was  leaving  and  was  expressing 
her  mind  concerning  the  place  in  no  measured  terms, 
summing  up  her  contempt  for  it  as  follows:  “I  would 
rather  be  the  girl  who  goes  about  in  the  alleys  than  to  5 
stay  here  any  longer!” 

And  yet  the  spectacle  of  eight  hours’  work  for  eight 
hours’  pay,  the  even-handed  justice  to  all  citizens  ir¬ 
respective  of  “pull,”  the  dividing  of  responsibility  be¬ 
tween  landlord  and  tenant,  and  the  readiness  to  enforce  10 
obedience  to  law  from  both,  was,  perhaps,  one  of  the 
most  valuable  demonstrations  which  could  have  been 
made.  Such  daily  living  on  the  part  of  the  office  holder 
is  of  infinitely  more  value  than  many  talks  on  civics 
for,  after  all,  we  credit  most  easily  that  which  we  see.  15 
The  careful  inspection  combined  with  other  causes, 
brought  about  a  great  improvement  in  the  cleanliness 
and  comfort  of  the  neighborhood  and  one  happy  day, 
when  the  death  rate  of  our  ward  was  found  to  have 
dropped  from  third  to  seventh  in  the  list  of  city  wards  20 
and  was  so  reported  to  our  Woman’s  Club,  the  applause 
which  followed  recorded  the  genuine  sense  of  participa¬ 
tion  in  the  result,  and  a  public  spirit  which  had  “made 
good.”  But  the  cleanliness  of  the  ward  was  becoming 
much  too  popular  to  suit  our  all-powerful  alderman  and,  2  5 
although  we  felt  fatuously  secure  under  the  regime  of 
civil  service,  he  found  a  way  to  circumvent  us  by 
eliminating  the  position  altogether.  He  introduced  an 


266  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ordinance  into  the  city  council  which  combined  the 
collection  of  refuse  with  the  cleaning  and  repairing  of 
the  streets,  the  whole  to  be  placed  under  a  ward 
superintendent.  The  office  of  course  was  to  be  filled 
5  under  civil  service  regulations  but  only  men  were 
eligible  to  the  examination.  Although  this  latter  regula¬ 
tion  was  afterwards  modified  in  favor  of  one  woman, 
it  was  retained  long  enough  to  put  the  nineteenth  ward 
inspector  out  of  office. 

o  Of  course  our  experience  in  inspecting  only  made  us 
more  conscious  of  the  wretched  housing  conditions  over 
which  we  had  been  distressed  from  the  first.  It  was 
during  the  World’s  Fair  summer  that  one  of  the  Hull- 
House  residents  in  a  public  address  upon  housing  reform 
5  used  as  an  example  of  indifferent  landlordism  a  large 
block  in  the  neighborhood  occupied  by  small  tenements 
and  stables  unconnected  with  a  street  sewer,  as  was 
much  similar  property  in  the  vicinity.  In  the  lecture 
the  resident  spared  neither  a  description  of  the  property 
o  nor  the  name  of  the  owner.  The  young  man  who  owned 
the  property  was  justly  indignant  at  this  public  method 
of  attack  and  promptly  came  to  investigate  the  con¬ 
dition  of  the  property.  Together  we  made  a  careful  tour 
of  the  houses  and  stables  and  in  the  face  of  the  con- 
s  ditions  that  we  found  there,  I  could  not  but  agree  with 
him  that  supplying  South  Italian  peasants  with  sanitary 
appliances  seemed  a  difficult  undertaking.  Nevertheless 
he  was  unwilling  that  the  block  should  remain  in  its 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  267 

deplorable  state,  and  he  finally  cut  through  the  dilemma 
with  the  rash  proposition  that  he  would  give  a  free 
lease  of  the  entire  tract  to  Hull-House,  accompanying 
the  offer,  however,  with  the  warning  remark,  that  if  we 
should  choose  to  use  the  income  from  the  rents  in  5 
sanitary  improvements  we  should  be  throwing  our 
money  away. 

Even  when  we  decided  that  the  houses  were  so  bad 
that  we  could  not  undertake  the  task  of  improving 
them,  he  was  game  and  stuck  to  his  proposition  that  10 
we  should  have  a  free  lease.  We  finally  submitted  a 
plan  that  the  houses  should  be  torn  down  and  the  entire 
tract  turned  into  a  playground,  although  cautious  ad¬ 
visers  intimated  that  it  would  be  very  inconsistent  to 
ask  for  subscriptions  for  the  support  of  Hull-House  when  1 5 
we  were  known  to  have  thrown  away  an  income  of  two 
thousand  dollars  a  year.  We,  however,  felt  that  a 
spectacle  of  inconsistency  was  better  than  one  of  bad 
landlordism  and  so  the  worst  of  the  houses  were  de¬ 
molished,  the  best  three  were  sold  and  moved  across  20 
the  street  under  careful  provision  that  they  might  never 
be  used  for  junkshops  or  saloons,  and  a  public  play¬ 
ground  was  finally  established.  Hull-House  became 
responsible  for  its  management  for  ten  years,  at  the 
end  of  which  time  it  was  turned  over  to  the  City  Play-  2  5 
ground  Commission  although  from  the  first  the  city  de¬ 
tailed  a  policeman  who  was  responsible  for  its  general 
order  and  who  became  a  valued  adjunct  of  the  House. 


268  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


During  fifteen  years  this  public-spirited  owner  of  the 
property  paid  all  the  taxes,  and  when  the  block  was 
finally  sold  he  made  possible  the  playground  equipment 
of  a  near-by  school  yard.  On  the  other  hand,  the  dis- 
5  possessed  tenants,  a  group  of  whom  had  to  be  evicted 
by  legal  process  before  their  houses  could  be  torn  down, 
have  never  ceased  to  mourn  their  former  estates.  Only 
the  other  day  I  met  upon  the  street  an  old  Italian 
harness  maker,  who  said  that  he  had  never  succeeded 
i o so  well  anywhere  else  nor  found  a  place  that  “seemed 
so  much  like  Italy.” 

Festivities  of  various  sorts  were  held  on  this  early 
playground,  always  a  May  day  celebration  with  its 
Maypole  dance  and  its  May  queen.  I  remember  that 
x  5  one  year  the  honor  of  being  queen  was  offered  to  the 
little  girl  who  should  pick  up  the  largest  number  of 
scraps  of  paper  which  littered  all  the  streets  and  alleys. 
The  children  that  spring  had  been  organized  into  a 
league  and  each  member  had  been  provided  with  a  stiff 
20  piece  of  wTire  upon  the  sharpened  point  of  which  stray 
bits  of  paper  were  impaled  and  later  soberly  counted  off 
into  a  large  box  in  the  Hull-House  alley.  The  little 
Italian  girl  who  thus  won  the  scepter  took  it  very 
gravely  as  the  just  reward  of  hard  labor,  and  we  were 
2  s  all  so  absorbed  in  the  desire  for  clean  and  tidy  streets 
that  we  were  wholly  oblivious  to  the  incongruity  of  thus 
selecting  “the  queen  of  love  and  beauty.” 

It  was  at  the  end  of  the  second  year  that  we  received 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  269 

a  visit  from  the  warden  of  Toynbee  Hall°  and  his  wife, 
as  they  were  returning  to  England  from  a  journey 
around  the  world.  They  had  lived  in  East  London  for 
many  years,  and  had  been  identified  with  the  public 
movements  for  its  betterment.  They  were  much 
shocked  that,  in  a  new  country  with  conditions  still 
plastic  and  hopeful,  so  little  attention  had  been  paid  to 
experiments  and  methods  of  amelioration  which  had 
already  been  tried;  and  they  looked  in  vain  through  our 
library  for  blue  books  and  governmental  reports  which 
recorded  painstaking  study  into  the  conditions  of 
English  cities. 

They  were  the  first  of  a  long  line  of  English  visitors 
to  express  the  conviction  that  many  things  in  Chicago 
were  untoward,  not  through  paucity  of  public  spirit  but 
through  a  lack  of  political  machinery  adapted  to  modern 
city  life.  This  was  not  all  of  the  situation  but  perhaps 
no  casual  visitor  could  be  expected  to  see  that  these 
matters  of  detail  seemed  unimportant  to  a  city  in  the 
first  flush  of  youth,  impatient  of  correction  and  con¬ 
vinced  that  all  would  be  well  with  its  future.  The  most 
obvious  faults  were  those  connected  with  the  congested 
housing  of  the  immigrant  population,  nine  tenths  of 
them  from  the  country,  who  carried  on  all  sorts  of 
traditional  activities  in  the  crowded  tenements.  That 
a  group  of  Greeks  should  be  permitted  to  slaughter 
sheep  in  a  basement,  that  Italian  women  should  be 
allowed  to  sort  over  rags  collected  from  the  city  dumps, 


27o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

not  only  within  the  city  limits  but  in  a  court  swarming 
with  little  children,  that  immigrant  bakers  should  con¬ 
tinue  unmolested  to  bake  bread  for  their  neighbors  in 
unspeakably  filthy  spaces  under  the  pavement,  ap- 
5  peared  incredible  to  visitors  accustomed  to  careful  city 
regulations.  I  recall  two  visits  made  to  the  Italian 
quarter  by  John  Burns  —  the  second,  thirteen  years 
after  the  first.  During  the  latter  visit  it  seemed  to  him 
unbelievable  that  a  certain  house  owned  by  a  rich 
o  Italian  should  have  been  permitted  to  survive.  He  re¬ 
membered  with  the  greatest  minuteness  the  positions 
of  the  houses  on  the  court,  with  the  exact  space  between 
the  front  and  rear  tenements,  and  he  asked  at  once 
whether  we  had  been  able  to  cut  a  window  into  a  dark 
shall  as  he  had  recommended  thirteen  years  before.  Al¬ 
though  we  were  obliged  to  confess  that  the  landlord 
would  not  permit  the  window  to  be  cut,  we  were  able 
to  report  that  a  City  Homes  Association  had  existed 
for  ten  years;  that  following  a  careful  study  of  tenement 
o  conditions  in  Chicago,  the  text  of  which  had  been 
written  by  a  Hull-House  resident,  the  association  had 
obtained  the  enactment  of  a  model  tenement-house 
code,  and  that  their  secretary  had  carefully  watched  the 
administration  of  the  law  for  years  so  that  its  operation 
s  might  not  be  minimized  by  the  granting  of  too  many 
exceptions  in  the  city  council.  Our  progress  still  seemed 
slow  to  Mr.  Burns  because  in  Chicago  the  actual  houses 
were  quite  unchanged,  embodying  features  long  since 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  271 

declared  illegal  in  London.  Only  this  year  could  we 
have  reported  to  him,  had  he  again  come  to  challenge 
11s,  that  the  provisions  of  the  law  had  at  last  been  ex¬ 
tended  to  existing  houses  and  that  a  conscientious  corps 
of  inspectors  under  an  efficient  chief,  were  fast  remedy¬ 
ing  the  most  glaring  evils,  while  a  band  of  nurses  and 
doctors  were  following  hard  upon  the  “  trail  of  the  white 
hearse.” 

The  mere  consistent  enforcement  of  existing  laws 
and  efforts  for  their  advance  often  placed  Hull-House, 
at  least  temporarily,  into  strained  relations  with  its 
neighbors.  I  recall  a  continuous  warfare  against  local 
landlords  who  would  move  wrecks  of  old  houses  as  a 
nucleus  for  new  ones  in  order  to  evade  the  provisions  of 
the  building  code,  and  a  certain  Italian  neighbor  who 
was  filled  with  bitterness  because  his  new  rear  tenement 
was  discovered  to  be  illegal.  It  seemed  impossible  to 
make  him  understand  that  the  health  of  the  tenants 
was  in  any  wise  as  important  as  his  undisturbed  rents. 

Nevertheless  many  evils  constantly  arise  in  Chicago 
from  congested  housing  which  wiser  cities  forestall  and 
prevent:  the  inevitable  boarders  crowded  into  a  dark 
tenement  already  too  small  for  the  use  of  the  im¬ 
migrant  family  occupying  it;  the  surprisingly  large 
number  of  delinquent  girls  who  have  become  criminally 
involved  with  their  own  fathers  and  uncles;  the  school 
children  who  cannot  find  a  quiet  spot  in  which  to  read 
or  study  and  who  perforce  go  into  the  streets  each 


272  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

evening;  the  tuberculosis  superinduced  and  fostered  by 
the  inadequate  rooms  and  breathing  spaces.  One  of 
the  Hull-House  residents,  under  the  direction  of  a 
Chicago  physician  who  stands  high  as  an  authority  on 
5  tuberculosis  and  who  devotes  a  large  proportion  of  his 
time  to  our  vicinity,  made  an  investigation  into  housing 
conditions  as  related  to  tuberculosis  with  a  result  as 
startling  as  that  of  the  “lung  block”  in  New  York. 

It  is  these  subtle  evils  of  wretched  and  inadequate 
o  housing  which  are  often  most  disastrous.  In  the  sum¬ 
mer  of  1902  during  an  epidemic  of  typhoid  fever  in 
which  our  ward,  although  containing  but  one  thirty- 
sixth  of  the  population  of  the  city,  registered  one  sixth 
of  the  total  number  of  deaths,  two  of  the  Hull-House 
5  residents  made  an  investigation  of  the  methods  of 
plumbing  in  the  houses  adjacent  to  conspicuous  groups 
of  fever  cases.  They  discovered  among  the  people  who 
had  been  exposed  to  the  infection,  a  widow  who  had 
lived  in  the  ward  for  a  number  of  years,  in  a  comfortable 
o  little  house  of  her  own.  Although  the  Italian  im¬ 
migrants  were  closing  in  all  round  her,  she  was  not 
willing  to  sell  her  property  and  to  move  away  until  she 
had  finished  the  education  of  her  children.  In  the  mean¬ 
time  she  held  herself  quite  aloof  from  her  Italian  neigh- 
s  bors  and  could  never  be  drawn  into  any  of  the  public 
efforts  to  secure  a  better  code  of  tenement-house 
sanitation.  Her  two  daughters  were  sent  to  an  eastern 
college.  One  June  when  one  of  them  had  graduated 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  273 

and  the  other  still  had  two  years  before  she  took  her 
degree,  they  came  to  the  spotless  little  house  and  to 
their  self-sacrificing  mother  for  the  summer  holiday. 
They  both  fell  ill  with  typhoid  fever  and  one  daughter 
died  because  the  mother’s  utmost  efforts  could  not  keep  5 
the  infection  out  of  her  own  house.  The  entire  disaster 
affords,  perhaps,  a  fair  illustration  of  the  futility  of  the 
individual  conscience  which  would  isolate  a  family  from 
the  rest  of  the  community  and  its  interests. 

The  careful  information  collected  concerning  the  10 
juxtapostion  of  the  typhoid  cases  to  the  various  systems 
of  plumbing  and  nonplumbing,  was  made  the  basis  of  a 
bacteriological  study  by  another  resident,  Dr.  Alice 
Hamilton,0  as  to  the  possibility  of  the  infection  having 
been  carried  by  flies.  Her  researches  were  so  convincing  1 5 
that  they  have  been  incorporated  into  the  body  of 
scientific  data  supporting  that  theory,  but  there  were 
also  practical  results  from  the  investigation.  It  was 
discovered  that  the  wretched  sanitary  appliances 
through  which  alone  the  infection  could  have  become  20 
so  widely  spread,  would  not  have  been  permitted  to 
remain,  unless  the  city  inspector  had  either  been 
criminally  careless  or  open  to  the  arguments  of  favored 
landlords. 

The  agitation  finally  resulted  in  a  long  and  stirring  2  5 
trial  before  the  civil  service  board  of  half  of  the  em¬ 
ployees  in  the  Sanitary  Bureau,  with  the  final  discharge 
of  eleven  out  of  the  entire  force  of  twenty-four.  The 


274  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

inspector  in  our  neighborhood  was  a  kindly  old  man, 
greatly  distressed  over  the  affair,  and  quite  unable  to 
understand  why  he  should  not  have  used  his  discretion 
as  to  the  time  when  a  landlord  should  be  forced  to  put 
sin  modern  appliances.  If  he  was  “very  poor,”  or  “just 
about  to  sell  his  place,”  or  “sure  that  the  house  would 
be  torn  down  to  make  room  for  a  factory,”  why  should 
one  “inconvenience”  him?  The  old  man  died  soon 
after  the  trial,  feeling  persecuted  to  the  very  last  and 

ionot  in  the  least  understanding  what  it  was  all  about. 
We  were  amazed  at  the  commercial  ramifications  which 
graft  in  the  City  Hall  involved  and  at  the  indignation 
which  interference  with  it  produced.  Hull-House  lost 
some  large  subscriptions  as  the  result  of  this  investiga- 

1  s  tion,  a  loss  which,  if  not  easy  to  bear,  was  at  least  com¬ 

prehensible.  We  also  uncovered  unexpected  graft  in 
connection  with  the  plumbers’  unions,  and  but  for  the 
fearless  testimony  of  one  of  their  members,  could  never 
have  brought  the  trial  to  a  successful  issue. 

20  Inevitable  misunderstanding  also  developed  in  con¬ 
nection  with  the  attempt  on  the  part  of  Hull-House 
residents  to  prohibit  the  sale  of  cocaine  to  minors, 
which  brought  us  into  sharp  conflict  with  many  drug¬ 
gists.  I  recall  an  Italian  druggist  living  on  the  edge  of 

2  s  the  neighborhood,  who  finally  came  with  a  committee 

of  his  fellow  countrymen  to  see  what  Hull-House  wanted 
of  him,  thoroughly  convinced  that  no  such  effort  could 
be  disinterested.  One  dreary  trial  after  another  had 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  275 

been  lost  through  the  inadequacy  of  the  existing  legis¬ 
lation  and  after  many  attempts  to  secure  better  legal 
regulation  of  its  sale,  a  new  law  with  the  cooperation  of 
many  agencies  was  finally  secured  in  1907.  Through  all 
this  the  Italian  druggist,  who  had  greatly  profited  by  5 
the  sale  of  cocaine  to  boys,  only  felt  outraged  and 
abused.  And  yet  the  thought  of  this  campaign  brings 
before  my  mind  with  irresistible  force,  a  young  Italian 
boy  who  died  —  a  victim  to  the  drug  at  the  age  of 
seventeen.  He  had  been  in  our  kindergarten  as  a  hand-  10 
some  merry  child,  in  our  clubs  as  a  vivacious  boy,  and 
then  gradually  there  was  an  eclipse  of  all  that  was 
animated  and  joyous  and  promising,  and  when  I  at  last 
saw  him  in  his  coffin,  it  was  impossible  to  connect  that 
haggard  shriveled  body  with  what  I  had  known  before.  1 5 
A  midwife  investigation,  undertaken  in  connection 
with  the  Chicago  Medical  Society,  while  showing  the 
great  need  of  further  state  regulation  in  the  interest  of  the 
most  ignorant  mothers  and  helpless  children,  brought 
us  into  conflict  with  one  of  the  most  venerable  of  all  20 
customs.  Was  all  this  a  part  of  the  unending  struggle 
between  the  old  and  new,  or  were  these  oppositions  so 
unexpected  and  so  unlooked  for  merely  a  reminder  of 
that  old  bit  of  wisdom  that  “there  is  no  guarding  against 
interpretations”?  Perhaps  more  subtle  still,  they  were  25 
due  to  that  very  super-refinement  of  disinterestedness 
which  will  not  justify  itself,  that  it  may  feel  superior  to 
public  opinion.  Some  of  our  investigations  of  course 


- 


276  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

had  no  such  untoward  results,  such  as  “An  Intensive 
Study  of  Truancy”  undertaken  by  a  resident  of  Hull- 
House  in  connection  with  the  compulsory  education 
department  of  the  Board  of  Education  and  the  Visiting 
5  Nurses  Association.  The  resident,  Mrs.  Britton,0  who, 
having  had  charge  of  our  children’s  clubs  for  many 
years,  knew  thousands  of  children  in  the  neighborhood, 
made  a  detailed  study  of  three  hundred  families,  tracing 
back  the  habitual  truancy  of  the  children  to  economic 
o  and  social  causes.  This  investigation  preceded  a  most 
interesting  conference  on  truancy  held  under  a  com¬ 
mittee  of  which  I  was  a  member  from  the  Chicago 
Board  of  Education.  It  left  lasting  results  upon  the 
administration  of  the  truancy  law  as  well  as  the  co- 
5  operation  of  volunteer  bodies. 

We  continually  conduct  small  but  careful  investiga¬ 
tions  at  Hull-House,  which  may  guide  us  in  our  im¬ 
mediate  doings  such  as  two  recently  undertaken  by 
Mrs.  Britton,  one  upon  the  reading  of  school  children 
o  before  new  books  were  bought  for  the  children’s  club 
libraries,  and  another  on  the  proportion  of  tuberculosis 
among  school  children,  before  we  opened  a  little  experi¬ 
mental  outdoor  school  on  one  of  our  balconies.  Some 
of  the  Hull-House  investigations  are  purely  negative  in 
5  result;  we  once  made  an  attempt  to  test  the  fatigue  of 
factory  girls  in  order  to  determine  how  far  overwork 
superinduced  the  tuberculosis  to  which  such  a  surprising 
number  of  them  were  victims.  The  one  scientific  in- 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  277 

strument  it  seemed  possible  to  use  was  an  ergograph,0  a 
complicated  and  expensive  instrument  kindly  lent  to 
us  from  the  physiological  laboratory  of  the  University 
of  Chicago.  I  remember  the  imposing  procession  we 
made  from  Hull-House  to  the  factory  full  of  working  5 
women,  in  which  the  proprietor  allowed  us  to  make  the 
tests;  first  there  was  the  precious  instrument  on  a  hand 
truck  guarded  by  an  anxious  student  and  the  young 
physician  who  was  going  to  take  the  tests  every  after¬ 
noon;  then  there  was  Dr.  Hamilton,  the  resident  in  10 
charge  of  the  investigation,  walking  with  a  scientist  who 
was  interested  to  see  that  the  instrument  was  properly 
installed;  I  followed  in  the  rear  to  talk  once  more  to 
the  proprietor  of  the  factory  to  be  quite  sure  that  he 
would  permit  the  experiment  to  go  on.  The  result  of  all  1 5 
this  preparation,  however,  was  to  have  the  instrument 
record  less  fatigue  at  the  end  of  the  day  than  at  the 
beginning,  not  because  the  girls  had  not  worked  hard 
and  were  not  “dog  tired”  as  they  confessed,  but  be¬ 
cause  the  instrument  was  not  fitted  to  find  it  out.  20 
For  many  years  we  have  administered  a  branch 
station  of  the  federal  post  office  at  Hull-House,  which 
we  applied  for  in  the  first  instance  because  our  neigh¬ 
bors  lost  such  a  large  percentage  of  the  money  they 
sent  to  Europe,  through  the  commissions  to  middle  2  5 
men.  The  experience  in  the  post  office  constantly  gave 
us  data  for  urging  the  establishment  of  postal  savings 
as  we  saw  one  perplexed  immigrant  after  another  turn- 


278  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ing  away  in  bewilderment  when  he  was  told  that  the 
United  States  post  office  did  not  receive  savings. 

We  find  increasingly,  however,  that  the  best  results 
are  to  be  obtained  in  investigations  as  in  other  under- 
s  takings,  by  combining  our  researches  with  those  of 
other  public  bodies  or  with  the  state  itself.  When  all 
the  Chicago  Settlements  found  themselves  distressed 
over  the  condition  of  the  newsboys  who,  because  they 
are  merchants  and  not  employees,  do  not  come  under 
othe  provisions  of  the  Illinois  child  labor  law,  they 
united  in  the  investigation  of  a  thousand  young  news¬ 
boys,  who  were  all  interviewed  on  the  streets  during  the 
same  twenty-four  hours.  Their  school  and  domestic 
status  was  easily  determined  later,  for  many  of  the  boys 
s  lived  in  the  immediate  neighborhoods  of  the  ten  Settle¬ 
ments  which  had  undertaken  the  investigation.  The 
report  embodying  the  results  of  the  investigation  recom¬ 
mended  a  city  ordinance  containing  features  from  the 
Boston  and  Buffalo  regulations,  and  although  an 
o  ordinance  was  drawn  up  and  a  strenuous  effort  was 
made  to  bring  it  to  the  attention  of  the  aldermen,  none 
of  them  would  introduce  it  into  the  city  council  without 
newspaper  backing.  We  were  able  to  agitate  for  it 
again  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  National  Child 
5  Labor  Committee  which  was  held  in  Chicago  in  1908, 
and  which  was  of  course  reported  in  papers  throughout 
the  entire  country.  This  meeting  also  demonstrated 
that  local  measures  can  sometimes  be  urged  most 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  279 

effectively  when  joined  to  the  efforts  of  a  national  body. 
Undoubtedly  the  best  discussions  ever  held  upon  the 
operation  and  status  of  the  Illinois  law,  were  those 
which  took  place  then.  The  needs  of  the  Illinois  chil¬ 
dren  were  regarded  in  connection  with  the  children  of 
the  nation  and  advanced  health  measures  for  Illinois 
were  compared  with  those  of  other  states. 

The  investigations  of  Hull-House  thus  tend  to  be 
merged  with  those  of  larger  organizations,  from  the  in¬ 
vestigation  of  the  social  value  of  saloons,  made  for  the 
Committee  of  Fifty  in  1896,  to  the  one  on  infant  mortal¬ 
ity  in  relation  to  nationality,  made  for  the  American 
Academy  of  Science  in  1909.  This  is  also  true  of  Hull- 
House  activities  in  regard  to  public  movements,  some 
of  which  are  inaugurated  by  the  residents  of  other 
Settlements,  as  the  Chicago  School  of  Civics  and 
Philanthropy,  founded  by  the  splendid  efforts  of  Dr. 
Graham  Taylor,0  for  many  years  head  of  Chicago  Com¬ 
mons.  All  of  our  recent  investigations  into  housing 
have  been  under  the  department  of  investigation  of  this 
school  with  which  several  of  the  Hull-House  residents 
are  identified,  quite  as  our  active  measures  to  secure 
better  housing  conditions  have  been  carried  on  with 
the  City  Homes  Association  and  through  the  coopera¬ 
tion  of  one  of  our  residents,  who  several  years  ago  was 
appointed  a  sanitary  inspector  on  the  city  staff. 

Perhaps  Dr.  Taylor  himself  offers  the  best  possible 
example  of  the  value  of  Settlement  experience  to  public 


280  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


undertakings,  in  his  manifold  public  activities  of  which 
one  might  instance  his  work  at  the  moment  upon  a  com¬ 
mission  recently  appointed  by  the  governor  of  Illinois 
to  report  upon  the  best  method  of  Industrial  Insurance 
5  or  Employer’s  Liability  Acts,  and  his  influence  in 
securing  another  to  study  into  the  subject  of  Industrial 
Diseases.  The  actual  factory  investigation  under  the 
latter  is  in  charge  of  Dr.  Hamilton,  of  Hull-House, 
whose  long  residence  in  an  industrial  neighborhood  as 
owell  as  her  scientific  attainment,  give  her  peculiar 
qualifications  for  the  undertaking. 

And  so  a  Settlement  is  led  along  from  the  concrete  to 
the  abstract,  as  may  easily  be  illustrated.  Many  years 
ago  a  tailors’  union  meeting  at  Hull-House  asked  our 
5  cooperation  in  tagging  the  various  parts  of  a  man’s  coat 
in  such  wise  as  to  show  the  money  paid  to  the  people 
who  had  made  it;  one  tag  for  the  cutting  and  another 
for  the  buttonholes,  another  for  the  finishing  and  so  on, 
the  resulting  total  to  be  compared  with  the  selling  price 
oof  the  coat  itself.  It  quickly  became  evident  that  we 
had  no  way  of  computing  how  much  of  this  larger  bal¬ 
ance  was  spent  for  salesmen,  commercial  travelers,  rent 
and  management,  and  the  poor  tagged  coat  was  finally 
left  hanging  limply  in  a  closet  as  if  discouraged  with  the 
5  attempt.  But  the  desire  of  the  manual  worker  to  know 
the  relation  of  his  own  labor  to  the  whole  is  not  only 
legitimate  but  must  form  the  basis  of  any  intelligent 
action  for  his  improvement.  It  was  therefore  with  the 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  281 


hope  of  reform  in  the  sewing  trades  that  the  Hull- 
House  residents  testified  before  the  Federal  Industrial 
Commission  in  1900,  and  much  later  with  genuine  en¬ 
thusiasm  joined  with  trades-unionists  and  other  public- 
spirited  citizens  in  an  industrial  exhibit  which  made  a 
graphic  presentation  of  the  conditions  and  rewards  of 
labor.  The  large  casino  building  in  which  it  was  held 
was  filled  every  day  and  evening  for  two  weeks,  showing 
how  popular  such  information  is,  if  it  can  be  presented 
graphically.  As  an  illustration  of  this  same  moving 
from  the  smaller  to  the  larger,  I  might  instance  the 
efforts  of  Miss  McDowell0  of  the  University  of  Chicago 
Settlement,  and  others,  in  urging  upon  Congress  the 
necessity  for  a  special  investigation  into  the  condition 
of  women  and  children  in  industry  because  we  had  dis¬ 
covered  the  insuperable  difficulties  of  smaller  investi¬ 
gations,  notably  one  undertaken  for  the  Illinois  Bureau 
of  Labor  by  Mrs.  Van  der  Vaart  of  Neighborhood 
House  and  by  Miss  Breckinridge  of  the  University  of 
Chicago.  This  investigation  made  clear  that  it  was  as 
impossible  to  detach  the  girls  working  in  the  stockyards 
from  their  sisters  in  industry,  as  it  was  to  urge  special 
legislation  on  their  behalf. 

In  the  earlier  years  of  the  American  Settlements,  the 
residents  were  sometimes  impatient  with  the  accepted 
methods  of  charitable  administration  and  hoped, 
through  residence  in  an  industrial  neighborhood,  to 
discover  more  cooperative  and  advanced  methods  of 


282  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


dealing  with  the  problems  of  poverty  which  are  so 
dependent  upon  industrial  maladjustment.  But  during 
twenty  years,  the  Settlements  have  seen  the  charitable 
people,  through  their  very  knowledge  of  the  poor,  con- 
s  stantly  approach  nearer  to  those  methods  formerly 
designated  as  radical.  The  residents,  so  far  from  holding 
aloof  from  organized  charity,  find  testimony,  certainly 
in  the  National  Conferences,  that  out  of  the  most  per¬ 
sistent  and  intelligent  efforts  to  alleviate  poverty,  will 
oin  all  probability  arise  the  most  significant  suggestions 
for  eradicating  poverty.  In  the  hearing  before  a  con¬ 
gressional  committee  for  the  establishment  of  a  Chil¬ 
dren’s  Bureau,  residents  in  American  Settlements 
joined  their  fellow  philanthropists  in  urging  the  need 
5  of  this  indispensable  instrument  for  collecting  and  dis¬ 
seminating  information  which  would  make  possible 
concerted  intelligent  action  on  behalf  of  children. 

Mr.  Howells  has  said  that  we  are  all  so  besotted  with 
our  novel  reading  that  we  have  lost  the  power  of  seeing 
o  certain  aspects  of  life  with  any  sense  of  reality  because 
we  are  continually  looking  for  the  possible  romance. 
The  description  might  apply  to  the  earlier  years  of  the 
American  settlement,  but  certainly  the  later  years  are 
filled  with  discoveries  in  actual  life  as  romantic  as  they 
s  are  unexpected.  If  I  may  illustrate  one  of  these  roman¬ 
tic  discoveries  from  my  own  experience,  I  would  cite  the 
indications  of  an  internationalism  as  sturdy  and  virile 
as  it  is  unprecedented  which  I  have  seen  in  our  cos- 


ACTIVITIES  AND  INVESTIGATIONS  283 

mopolitan  neighborhood:  when  a  South  Italian  Catho¬ 
lic  is  forced  by  the  very  exigencies  of  the  situation  to 
make  friends  with  an  Austrian  Jew  representing  an¬ 
other  nationality  and  another  religion,  both  of  which 
cut  into  all  his  most  cherished  prejudices,  he  finds  it 
harder  to  utilize  them  a  second  time  and  gradually  loses 
them.  He  thus  modifies  his  provincialism  for  if  an  old 
enemy  working  by  his  side  has  turned  into  a  friend,  al¬ 
most  anything  may  happen.  When,  therefore,  I  be¬ 
came  identified  with  the  peace  movement  both  in  its 
International  and  National  Conventions,  I  hoped  that 
this  internationalism  engendered  in  the  immigrant 
quarters  of  American  cities  might  be  recognized  as  an 
effective  instrument  in  the  cause  of  peace.  I  first  set  it 
forth  with  some  misgiving  before  the  Convention  held 
in  Boston  in  1904  and  it  is  always  a  pleasure  to  recall 
the  hearty  assent  given  to  it  by  Professor  Williamjames. 

I  have  always  objected  to  the  phrase  “sociological 
laboratory”  applied  to  us,  because  Settlements  should 
be  something  much  more  human  and  spontaneous  than 
such  a  phrase  connotes,  and  yet  it  is  inevitable  that  the 
residents  should  know  their  own  neighborhoods  more 
thoroughly  than  any  other,  and  that  their  experiences 
there  should  affect  their  convictions. 

Years  ago  I  was  much  entertained  by  a  story  told 
at  the  Chicago  Woman’s  Club  by  one  of  its  ablest 
members  in  the  discussion  following  a  paper  of  mine  on 
“The  Outgrowths  of  Toynbee  Hall.”  She  said  that 


284  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

when  she  was  a  little  girl  playing  in  her  mother’s  garden, 
she  one  day  discovered  a  small  toad  who  seemed  to  her 
very  forlorn  and  lonely,  although  as  she  did  not  in  the 
least  know  how  to  comfort  him,  she  reluctantly  left  him 
5  to  his  fate;  later  in  the  day,  quite  at  the  other  end  of 
the  garden,  she  found  a  large  toad,  also  apparently  with¬ 
out  family  and  friends.  With  a  heart  full  of  tender 
sympathy,  she  took  a  stick  and  by  exercising  infinite 
patience  and  some  skill,  she  finally  pushed  the  little 
otoad  through  the  entire  length  of  the  garden  into  the 
company  of  the  big  toad,  when,  to  her  inexpressible 
horror  and  surprise,  the  big  toad  opened  his  mouth  and 
swallowed  the  little  one.  The  moral  of  the  tale  was  clear, 
applied  to  people  who  lived  “where  they  did  not 
5  naturally  belong,”  although  I  protested  that  was  ex¬ 
actly  what  we  wanted  —  to  be  swallowed  and  digested, 
to  disappear  into  the  bulk  of  the  people. 

Twenty  years  later  I  am  willing  to  testify  that  some¬ 
thing  of  the  sort  does  take  place  after  years  of  identifica- 
otion  with  an  industrial  community. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
Civic  Cooperation 

One  of  the  first  lessons  we  learned  at  Hull-House  was 
that  private  beneficence  is  totally  inadequate  to  deal 
with  the  vast  numbers  of  the  city’s  disinherited.  We 
also  quickly  came  to  realize  that  there  are  certain  types 
of  wretchedness  from  which  every  private  philanthropy 
shrinks  and  which  are  cared  for  only  in  those  wards  of 
the  county  hospital  provided  for  the  wrecks  of  vicious 
living  or  in  the  city’s  isolation  hospital  for  smallpox 
patients. 

I  have  heard  a  broken-hearted  mother  exclaim  when 
her  erring  daughter  came  home  at  last,  too  broken  and 
diseased  to  be  taken  into  the  family  she  had  disgraced, 
“There  is  no  place  for  her  but  the  top  floor  of  the 
County  Hospital;  they  will  have  to  take  her  there,”  and 
this  only  after  every  possible  expedient  had  been  tried 
or  suggested.  This  aspect  of  governmental  responsi¬ 
bility  was  unforgetably  borne  in  upon  me  during  the 
smallpox  epidemic  following  the  World’s  Fair,  when 
one  of  the  residents,  Mrs.  Kelley,  as  State  Factory  In¬ 
spector,  was  much  concerned  in  discovering  and  destroy¬ 
ing  clothing  which  was  being  finished  in  houses  con¬ 
taining  unreported  cases  of  smallpox.  The  deputy  most 

285 


286  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

successful  in  locating  such  cases  lived  at  Hull-House 
during  the  epidemic  because  he  did  not  wish  to  expose 
his  own  family.  Another  resident,  Miss  Lathrop,  as  a 
member  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  went  back 
sand  forth  to  the  crowded  pest  house  which  had  been 
hastily  constructed  on  a  stretch  of  prairie  west  of  the 
city.  As  Hull-House  was  already  so  exposed,  it  seemed 
best  for  the  special  smallpox  inspectors  from  the  Board 
of  Health  to  take  their  meals  and  change  their  clothing 
o  there  before  they  went  to  their  respective  homes.  All 
of  these  officials  had  accepted  without  question  and  as 
implicit  in  public  office,  the  obligation  to  carry  on  the 
dangerous  and  difficult  undertakings  for  which  private 
philanthropy  is  unfitted,  as  if  the  commonalty  of  com- 
5  passion  represented  by  the  State  was  more  comprehend¬ 
ing  than  that  of  any  individual  group. 

It  was  as  early  as  our  second  winter  on  Halsted 
Street  that  one  of  the  Hull-House  residents  received  an 
appointment  from  the  Cook  County  agent  as  a  county 
o  visitor.  She  reported  at  the  agency  each  morning,  and 
all  the  cases  within  a  radius  of  ten  blocks  from  Hull- 
House  were  given  to  her  for  investigation.  This  gave 
her  a  legitimate  opportunity  for  knowing  the  poorest 
people  in  the  neighborhood  and  also  for  understanding 
5  the  county  method  of  outdoor  relief.  The  commissioners 
were  at  first  dubious  of  the  value  of  such  a  visitor  and 
predicted  that  a  woman  would  be  a  perfect  “coal 
chute”  for  giving  away  county  supplies,  but  they 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


287 

gradually  came  to  depend  upon  her  suggestion  and 
advice. 

In  1893  this  same  resident,  Miss  Julia  C.  Lathrop,0 
was  appointed  by  the  governor  a  member  of  the  Illinois 
State  Board  of  Charities.  She  served  in  this  capacity 
for  two  consecutive  terms  and  was  later  reappointed  to 
a  third  term.  Perhaps  her  most  valuable  contribution 
towards  the  enlargement  and  reorganization  of  the 
charitable  institutions  of  the  State  came  through  her 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  beneficiaries,  and  her  ex¬ 
perience  demonstrated  that  it  is  only  through  long 
residence  among  the  poor  that  an  official  could  have 
learned  to  view  public  institutions  as  she  did,  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  inmates  rather  than  from  that  of  the 
managers.  Since  that  early  day,  residents  of  Hull- 
House  have  spent  much  time  in  working  for  the  civil 
service  methods  of  appointment  for  employees  in  the 
county  and  state  institutions;  for  the  establishment  of 
state  colonies  for  the  care  of  epileptics;  and  for  a  dozen 
other  enterprises  which  occupy  that  borderland  between 
charitable  effort  and  legislation.  In  this  borderland  we 
cooperate  in  many  civic  enterprises  for  I  think  we  may 
claim  that  Hull-House  has  always  held  its  activities 
lightly,  ready  to  hand  them  over  to  whosoever  would 
carry  them  on  properly. 

Miss  Starr  had  early  made  a  collection  of  framed 
photographs,  largely  of  the  paintings  studied  in  her  art 
class,  which  became  the  basis  of  a  loan  collection  first 


288  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


used  by  the  Hull-House  students  and  later  extended  to 
the  public  schools.  It  may  be  fair  to  suggest  that  this 
effort  was  the  nucleus  of  the  Public  School  Art  Society 
which  was  later  formed  in  the  city  and  of  which  Miss 
5  Starr  was  the  first  president. 

In  our  first  two  summers  we  had  maintained  three 
baths  in  the  basement  of  our  own  house  for  the  use  of 
the  neighborhood  and  they  afforded  some  experience 
and  argument  for  the  erection  of  the  first  public  bath- 
o  house  in  Chicago,  which  was  built  on  a  neighboring 
street  and  opened  under  the  city  Board  of  Health.  The 
lot  upon  which  it  was  erected  belonged  to  a  friend  of 
Hull-House  who  offered  it  to  the  city  without  rent,  and 
this  enabled  the  city  to  erect  the  first  public  bath  from 
5  the  small  appropriation  of  ten  thousand  dollars.  Great 
fear  was  expressed  by  the  public  authorities  that  the 
baths  would  not  be  used  and  the  old  story  of  the  bath¬ 
tubs  in  model  tenements  which  had  been  turned  into 
coal  bins  was  often  quoted  to  us.  We  were  supplied, 
o  however,  with  the  incontrovertible  argument  that  in 
our  adjacent  third  square  mile  there  were  in  1892  but 
three  bathtubs  and  that  this  fact  was  much  complained 
of  by  many  of  the  tenement-house  dwellers.  Our  con¬ 
tention  was  justified  by  the  immediate  and  overflowing 
5  use  of  the  public  baths,  as  we  had  before  been  sustained 
in  the  contention  that  an  immigrant  population  would 
respond  to  opportunities  for  reading  when  the  Public 
Library  Board  had  established  a  branch  reading  room 
at  Hull-House. 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


289 

We  also  quickly  discovered  that  nothing  brought  us 
so  absolutely  into  comradeship  with  our  neighbors  as 
mutual  and  sustained  effort  such  as  the  paving  of  a 
street,  the  closing  of  a  gambling  house,  or  the  restora¬ 
tion  of  a  veteran  police  sergeant. 

Several  of  these  earlier  attempts  at  civic  cooperation 
were  undertaken  in  connection  with  the  Hull-House 
Men’s  Club  which  had  been  organized  in  the  spring  of 
1893,  had  been  incorporated  under  a  state  charter  of 
its  own  and  had  occupied  a  club  room  in  the  gymnasium 
building.  This  club  obtained  an  early  success  in  one  of 
the  political  struggles  in  the  ward  and  thus  fastened 
upon  itself  a  specious  reputation  for  political  power.  It 
was  at  last  so  torn  by  the  dissensions  of  two  political 
factions  which  attempted  to  capture  it  that,  although 
it  is  still  an  existing  organization,  it  has  never  regained 
the  prestige  of  its  first  five  years.  Its  early  political 
success  came  in  a  campaign  Hull-House  had  instigated 
against  a  powerful  alderman  who  has  held  office  for 
more  than  twenty  years  in  the  nineteenth  ward,  and 
who,  although  notoriously  corrupt,  is  still  firmly  in¬ 
trenched  among  his  constituents. 

Hull-Ho  use  has  had  to  do  with  three  campaigns 
organized  against  him.  In  the  first  one  he  was  apparent¬ 
ly  only  amused  at  our  “Sunday  School”  effort  and  did 
little  to  oppose  the  election  to  the  aldermanic  office  of  a 
member  of  the  Hull-House  Men’s  Club  who  thus  be¬ 
came  his  colleague  in  the  city  council.  When  Hull- 
Hoiiue*  however,  made  an  effort  in  the  following  spring 


29o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

against  the  reelection  of  the  alderman  himself,  we  en¬ 
countered  the  most  determined  and  skillful  opposition. 
In  these  campaigns  we  doubtless  depended  too  much 
upon  the  idealistic  appeal,  for  we  did  not  yet  comprehend 
5  the  element  of  reality  always  brought  into  the  political 
struggle  in  such  a  neighborhood  where  politics  deal  so 
directly  with  getting  a  job  and  earning  a  living. 

We  soon  discovered  that  approximately  one  out  of 
every  five  voters  in  the  nineteenth  ward  at  that  time 
oheld  a  job  dependent  upon  the  good  will  of  the  aider- 
man.  There  were  no  civil  service  rules  to  interfere  and 
the  unskilled  voter  swept  the  street  and  dug  the  sewer, 
as  secure  in  his  position  as  the  more  sophisticated  voter 
who  tended  a  bridge  or  occupied  an  office  chair  in  the  City 
5  Hall.  The  alderman  was  even  more  fortunate  in  finding 
places  with  the  franchise-seeking  corporations;  it  took 
us  some  time  to  understand  why  so  large  a  proportion 
of  our  neighbors  were  street-car  employees  and  why 
we  had  such  a  large  club  composed  solely  of  telephone 
o  girls.  Our  powerful  alderman  had  various  methods  of 
intrenching  himself.  Many  people  were  indebted  to 
him  for  his  kindly  services  in  the  police  station  and  the 
justice  courts,  for  in  those  days  Irish  constituents  easily 
broke  the  peace,  and  before  the  establishment  of  the 
s  Juvenile  Court,  boys  were  arrested  for  very  trivial 
offenses;  added  to  these  were  hundreds  of  constituents 
indebted  to  him  for  personal  kindness,  from  the  peddler 
who  received  a  free  license  to  the  business  man  who 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


291 


had  a  railroad  pass  to  New  York.  Our  third  campaign 
against  him,  when  we  succeeded  in  making  a  serious 
impression  upon  his  majority,  evoked  from  his  hench¬ 
men  the  same  sort  of  hostility  which  a  striker  so  in¬ 
evitably  feels  against  the  man  who  would  take  his  job, 
even  sharpened  by  the  sense  that  the  movement  for 
reform  came  from  an  alien  source. 

Another  result  of  the  campaign  was  an  expectation 
on  the  part  of  our  new  political  friends  that  Hull-House 
would  perform  like  offices  for  them,  and  there  resulted 
endless  confusion  and  misunderstanding  because  in 
many  cases  we  could  not  even  attempt  to  do  what  the 
alderman  constantly  did  with  a  right  good  will.  When 
he  protected  a  law  breaker  from  the  legal  consequences 
of  his  act,  his  kindness  appeared,  not  only  to  himself 
but  to  all  beholders,  like  the  deed  of  a  powerful  and 
kindly  statesman.  When  Hull-House  on  the  other  hand 
insisted  that  a  law  must  be  enforced,  it  could  but  ap¬ 
pear  like  the  persecution  of  the  offender.  We  were 
certainly  not  anxious  for  consistency  nor  for  individual 
achievement,  but  in  a  desire  to  foster  a  higher  political 
morality  and  not  to  lower  our  standards,  we  constantly 
clashed  with  the  existing  political  code.  We  also  un¬ 
wittingly  stumbled  upon  a  powerful  combination  of 
which  our  alderman  was  the  political  head,  with  its 
banking,  its  ecclesiastical,  and  its  journalistic  represent¬ 
atives,  and  as  we  followed  up  the  clew  and  naively  told 
all  we  discovered,  we  of  course  laid  the  foundations  for 


292  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

opposition  which  has  manifested  itself  in  many  forms; 
the  most  striking  expression  of  it  was  an  attack  upon 
Hull-House  lasting  through  weeks  and  months  by  a 
Chicago  daily  newspaper  which  has  since  ceased 
5  publication. 

During  the  third  campaign  I  received  many  anony¬ 
mous  letters  —  those  from  the  men  often  obscene,  those 
from  the  women  revealing  that  curious  connection  be¬ 
tween  prostitution  and  the  lowest  type  of  politics  which 
o  every  city  tries  in  vain  to  hide.  I  had  offers  from  the 
men  in  the  city  prison  to  vote  properly  if  released; 
various  communications  from  lodging-house  keepers  as 
to  the  prices  of  the  vote  they  were  ready  to  deliver; 
everywhere  appeared  that  animosity  which  is  evoked 
5  only  when  a  man  feels  that  his  means  of  livelihood  is 
threatened. 

As  I  look  back,  I  am  reminded  of  the  state  of  mind 
of  Kipling’s  newspaper  men  who  witnessed  a  volcanic 
eruption  at  sea,  in  which  unbelievable  deep-sea  creatures 
owere  expelled  to  the  surface,  among  them  an  enormous 
white  serpent,  blind  and  smelling  of  musk,  whose  death 
throes  thrashed  the  sea  into  a  fury.  With  professional 
instinct  unimpaired,  the  journalists  carefully  observed 
the  uncanny  creature  never  designed  for  the  eyes  of 
5  men;  but  a  few  days  later,  when  they  found  themselves 
in  a  comfortable  second-class  carriage,  traveling  from 
Southampton  to  London  between  trim  hedgerows  and 
smug  English  villages,  they  concluded  that  the  ex- 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


293 


perience  was  too  sensational  to  be  put  before  the  British 
public,  and  it  became  improbable  even  to  themselves. 

Many  subsequent  years  of  living  in  kindly  neighbor¬ 
hood  fashion  with  the  people  of  the  nineteenth  ward 
has  produced  upon  my  memory  the  soothing  effect  of  5 
the  second-class  railroad  carriage  and  many  of  these 
political  experiences  have  not  only  become  remote  but 
already  seem  improbable.  On  the  other  hand,  these 
campaigns  were  not  without  their  rewards;  one  of  them 
was  a  quickened  friendship  both  with  the  more  sub-  10 
stantial  citizens  in  the  ward  and  with  a  group  of  fine 
young  voters  whose  devotion  to  Hull-House  has  never 
since  failed;  another  was  a  sense  of  identification  with 
public-spirited  men  throughout  the  city  who  con¬ 
tributed  money  and  time  to  what  they  considered  a  15 
gallant  effort  against  political  corruption.  I  remember 
a  young  professor  from  the  University  of  Chicago 
who  with  his  wife  came  to  live  at  Hull-House,  traveling 
the  long  distance  every  day  throughout  the  autumn 
and  winter  that  he  might  qualify  as  a  nineteenth-ward  20 
voter  in  the  spring  campaign.  Pie  served  as  a  watcher 
at  the  polls  and  it  was  but  a  poor  reward  for  his  devotion 
that  he  was  literally  set  upon  and  beaten  up,  for  in  those 
good  old  days  such  things  frequently  occurred.  Many 
another  case  of  devotion  to  our  standard,  so  recklessly  25 
raised,  might  be  cited  but  perhaps  more  valuable  than 
any  of  these  was  the  sense  of  identification  we  obtained 
with  the  rest  of  Chicago, 


294  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

So  far  as  a  Settlement  can  discern  and  bring  to  local 
consciousness  neighborhood  needs  which  are  common 
needs,  and  can  give  vigorous  help  to  the  municipal 
measures  through  which  such  needs  shall  be  met,  it 
5  fulfills  its  most  valuable  function.  To  illustrate  from 
our  first  effort  to  improve  the  street  paving  in  the 
vicinity,  we  found  that  when  we  had  secured  the  con¬ 
sent  of  the  majority  of  the  property  owners  on  a  given 
street  for  a  new  paving,  the  alderman  checked  the  en- 
otire  plan  through  his  kindly  service  to  one  man  who  had 
appealed  to  him  to  keep  the  assessments  down.  The 
street  long  remained  a  shocking  mass  of  wet,  dilapidated 
cedar  blocks,  where  children  were  sometimes  mired  as 
they  floated  a  surviving  block  in  the  water  which 
s  speedily  filled  the  holes  whence  other  blocks  had  been 
extracted  for  fuel.  And  yet  when  we  were  able  to 
demonstrate  that  the  street  paving  had  thus  been  re¬ 
duced  into  cedar  pulp  by  the  heavily  loaded  wagons  of 
an  adjacent  factory,  that  the  expense  of  its  repaving 
o  should  be  borne  from  a  general  fund  and  not  by  the  poor 
property  owners,  we  found  that  we  could  all  unite  in 
advocating  reform  in  the  method  of  repaving  assess¬ 
ments,  and  the  alderman  himself  was  obliged  to  come 
into  such  a  popular  movement.  The  Nineteenth  Ward 
s  Improvement  Association  which  met  at  Hull-House 
during  two  winters,  was  the  first  body  of  citizens  able 
to  make  a  real  impression  upon  the  local  paving  situa¬ 
tion.  They  secured  an  expert  to  watch  the  paving  as  it 


CIVIC  COOPERATION  295 

went  down  to  be  sure  that  their  half  of  the  paving  money 
was  well  expended.  In  the  belief  that  property  values 
would  be  thus  enhanced,  the  common  aim  brought  to¬ 
gether  the  more  prosperous  people  of  the  vicinity,  some¬ 
what  as  the  Hull-House  Cooperative  Coal  Association  5 
brought  together  the  poorer  ones. 

I  remember  that  during  the  second  campaign  against 
our  alderman,  Governor  Pingree0  of  Michigan  came  to 
visit  at  Hull-House.  He  said  that  the  stronghold  of 
such  a  man  was  not  the  place  in  which  to  start  municipal  1  o 
regeneration;  that  good  aldermen  should  be  elected 
from  the  promising  wards  first,  until  a  majority  of 
honest  men  in  the  city  council  should  make  politics  un¬ 
profitable  for  corrupt  men.  We  replied  that  it  was 
difficult  to  divide  Chicago  into  good  and  bad  wards,  but  1  5 
that  a  new  organization  called  the  Municipal  Voters’ 
League  was  attempting  to  give  to  the  well-meaning 
voter  in  every  ward  throughout  the  city,  accurate  in¬ 
formation  concerning  the  candidates  and  their  relation, 
past  and  present,  to  vital  issues.  One  of  our  trustees,  20 
who  was  most  active  in  inaugurating  this  League,  al¬ 
ways  said  that  his  nineteenth-ward  experience  had  con¬ 
vinced  him  of  the  unity  of  city  politics,  and  that  he 
constantly  used  our  campaign  as  a  challenge  to  the 
unaroused  citizens  living  in  wards  less  conspicuously  25 
corrupt. 

Certainly  the  need  for  civic  cooperation  was  obvious 
in  many  directions,  and  in  none  more  strikingly  than  in 


296  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  organized  effort  which  must  be  carried  on  un¬ 
ceasingly  if  young  people  are  to  be  protected  from  the 
darker  and  coarser  dangers  of  the  city.  The  cooperation 
between  EIull-House  and  the  Juvenile  Protective 
s  Association  came  about  gradually,  and  it  seems  now  al¬ 
most  inevitably.  From  our  earliest  days  we  saw  many 
boys  constantly  arrested,  and  I  had  a  number  of  most 
enlightening  experiences  in  the  police  station  with  an 
Irish  lad  whose  mother  upon  her  deathbed  had  begged 
iome  “to  look  after  him.”  We  were  distressed  by  the 
gangs  of  very  little  boys  who  would  sally  forth  with  an 
enterprising  leader  in  search  of  old  brass  and  iron, 
sometimes  breaking  into  empty  houses  for  the  sake  of 
the  faucets  or  lead  pipe  which  they  would  sell  for  a  good 
1 5  price  to  a  junk  dealer.  With  the  money  thus  obtained 
they  would  buy  cigarettes  and  beer  or  even  candy, 
which  could  be  conspicuously  consumed  in  the  alley 
where  they  might  enjoy  the  excitement  of  being  seen 
and  suspected  by  the  “coppers.”  From  the  third  year 
20  of  Hull-House,  one  of  the  residents  held  a  semi-official 
position  in  the  nearest  police  station;  at  least  the  ser¬ 
geant  agreed  to  give  her  provisional  charge  of  every 
boy  and  girl  under  arrest  for  a  trivial  offense. 

Mrs.  Stevens,  who  performed  this  work  for  several 
2  s  years,  became  the  first  probation  officer  of  the  Juvenile 
Court  when  it  was  established  in  Cook  County  in  1899. 
She  was  the  sole  probation  officer  at  first,  but  at  the 
time  of  her  death,  which  occurred  at  Hull-House  in 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


297 


1900,  she  was  the  senior  officer  of  a  corps  of  six.  Her 
entire  experience  had  fitted  her  to  deal  wisely  with  way¬ 
ward  children.  She  had  gone  into  a  New  England  cotton 
mill  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  where  she  had  promptly  lost 
the  index  finger  of  her  right  hand  through  “careless¬ 
ness”  she  was  told,  and  no  one  then  seemed  to  under¬ 
stand  that  freedom  from  care  was  the  prerogative  of 
childhood.  Later  she  became  a  typesetter  and  was  one 
of  the  first  women  in  America  to  become  a  member  of 
the  typographical  union,  retaining  her  “card”  through 
all  the  later  years  of  editorial  work.  As  the  Juvenile 
Court  developed,  the  committee  of  public-spirited 
citizens  who  first  supplied  only  Mrs.  Stevens’  salary, 
later  maintained  a  corps  of  twenty-two  such  officers; 
several  of  these  were  Hull-House  residents  who  brought 
to  the  house  for  many  years  a  sad  little  procession  of 
children  struggling  against  all  sorts  of  handicaps.  When 
legislation  was  secured  which  placed  the  probation 

officers  upon  the  pay  roll  of  the  county,  it  was  a  chal- 

• 

lenge  to  the  efficiency  of  the  civil  service  method  of  ap¬ 
pointment  to  obtain  by  examination  men  and  women 
fitted  for  this  delicate  human  task.  As  one  of  five  people 
asked  by  the  civil  service  commission  to  conduct  this 
first  examination  for  probation  officers,  I  became  con¬ 
vinced  that  we  were  but  at  the  beginning  of  the  non¬ 
political  method  of  selecting  public  servants,  but  even 
stiff  and  unbending  as  the  examination  may  be,  it  is 
still  our  hope  of  political  salvation. 


298  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

In  1907  the  Juvenile  Court  was  housed  in  a  model 
court  building  of  its  own,  containing  a  detention  home 
and  equipped  with  a  competent  staff.  The  committee 
of  citizens  largely  responsible  for  this  result  thereupon 
5  turned  their  attention  to  the  conditions  which  the 
records  of  the  court  indicated  had  led  to  the  alarming 
amount  of  juvenile  delinquency  and  crime.  They  organ¬ 
ized  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association,  whose  twenty- 
two  officers  meet  weekly  at  Hull-House  with  their 
10  executive  committee  to  report  what  they  have  found 
and  to  discuss  city  conditions  affecting  the  lives  of 
children  and  young  people. 

The  association  discovers  that  there  are  certain 
temptations  into  which  children  so  habitually  fall  that 
1 5  it  is  evident  that  the  average  child  cannot  withstand 
them.  An  overwhelming  mass  of  data  is  accumulated 
showing  the  need  of  enforcing  existing  legislation  and 
of  securing  new  legislation,  but  it  also  indicates  a 
hundred  other  directions  in  which  the  young  people  who 
2  o  so  gayly  walk  our  streets,  often  to  their  own  destruction, 
need  safeguarding  and  protection. 

The  effort  of  the  association  to  treat  the  youth  of  the 
city  with  consideration  and  understanding  has  rallied 
the  most  unexpected  forces  to  its  standard.  Quite  as 
2  5  the  basic  needs  of  life  are  supplied  solely  by  those  who 
make  money  out  of  the  business,  so  the  modern  city 
has  assumed  that  the  craving  for  pleasure  must  be 
ministered  to  only  by  the  sordid.  This  assumption, 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


299 


however,  in  a  large  measure  broke  down  as  soon  as  the 
Juvenile  Protective  Association  courageously  put  it  to 
the  te^t.  After  persistent  prosecutions,  but  also  after 
many  friendly  interviews,  the  Druggists’  Association 
itself  prosecutes  those  of  its  members  who  sell  indecent 
post  cards;  the  Saloon  Keepers’  Protective  Association 
not  only  declines  to  protect  members  who  sell  liquor 
to  minors,  but  now  takes  drastic  action  to  prevent  such 
sales;  the  Retail  Grocers’  Association  forbids  the  selling 
of  tobacco  to  minors;  the  Association  of  Department 
Store  Managers  not  only  increased  the  vigilance  in 
their  waiting  rooms  by  supplying  more  matrons,  but  as 
a  body  they  have  become  regular  contributors  to  the 
association;  the  special  watchmen  in  all  the  railroad 
yards  agree  not  to  arrest  trespassing  boys  but  to  report 
them  to  the  association;  the  firms  manufacturing  mov¬ 
ing  picture  films  not  only  submit  their  films  to  a  volun¬ 
teer  inspection  committee,  but  ask  for  suggestions  in 
regard  to  new  matter;  and  the  Five-Cent  Theaters  ar¬ 
range  for  ‘‘stunts”  which  shall  deal  with  the  subject  of 
public  health  and  morals  when  the  lecturers  provided 
are  entertaining  as  well  as  instructive. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  arouse  the  impulse  of  protection 
for  the  young,  which  would  doubtless  dictate  the  daily 
acts  of  many  a  bartender  and  pool-room  keeper  if  they 
could  only  indulge  it  without  thereby  giving  their  rivals 
an  advantage.  When  this  difficulty  is  removed  by  an 
even-handed  enforcement  of  the  law,  that  simple  kind- 


3oo  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

liness  which  the  innocent  always  evoke  goes  from  one  to 
another  like  a  slowly  spreading  flame  of  good  will. 
Doubtless  the  most  rewarding  experience  in  any  such 
undertaking  as  that  of  the  Juvenile  Protective  Associa- 
stion,  is  the  warm  and  intelligent  cooperation  coming 
from  unexpected  sources  —  official  and  commercial  as 
well  as  philanthropic.  Upon  the  suggestion  of  the 
association,  social  centers  have  been  opened  in  various 
parts  of  the  city,  disused  buildings  turned  into  recrea¬ 
te  tion  rooms,  vacant  lots  made  into  gardens,  hiking 
parties  organized  for  country  excursions,  bathing 
beaches  established  on  the  lake  front,  and  public  schools 
opened  for  social  purposes.  Through  the  efForts  of 
public-spirited  citizens  a  medical  clinic  and  a  Psycho- 
s  pathic  Institute  have  become  associated  with  the 
Juvenile  Court  of  Chicago,  in  addition  to  which  an  ex¬ 
haustive  study  of  court-records  has  just  been  completed. 
To  this  carefully  collected  data  concerning  the  ab¬ 
normal  child,  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association  hopes 
oin  time  to  add  knowledge  of  the  normal  child  who  lives 
under  the  most  adverse  city  conditions. 

It  was  not  without  hope  that  I  might  be  able  to 
forward  in  the  public  school  system  the  solution  of  some 
of  these  problems  of  delinquency  so  dependent  upon 
s  truancy  and  ill-adapted  education,  that  I  became  a 
member  of  the  Chicago  Board  of  Education  in  July, 
1905.  It  is  impossible  to  write  of  the  situation  as  it  be¬ 
came  dramatized  in  half  a  dozen  strong  personalities, 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


301 


but  the  entire  experience  was  so  illuminating  as  to  the 
difficulties  and  limitations  of  democratic  government, 
that  it  would  be  unfair  in  a  chapter  on  Civic  Coopera¬ 
tion  not  to  attempt  an  outline. 

Even  the  briefest  statement,  however,  necessitates 
a  review  of  the  preceding  few  years.  For  a  decade  the 
Chicago  school  teachers,  or  rather  a  majority  of  them 
who  were  organized  into  the  Teachers’  Federation,  had 
been  engaged  in  a  conflict  with  the  Board  of  Education 
both  for  more  adequate  salaries  and  for  more  self- 
direction  in  the  conduct  of  the  schools.  In  pursuance 
of  the  first  object,  they  had  attacked  the  tax  dodger 
along  the  entire  line  of  his  defense,  from  the  curbstone 
to  the  Supreme  Court.  They  began  with  an  intricate 
investigation  which  uncovered  the  fact  that  in  1899, 
$235,000,000  of  value  of  public  utility  corporations  paid 
nothing  in  taxes.  The  Teachers’  Federation  brought  a 
suit  which  was  prosecuted  through  the  Supreme  Court 
of  Illinois  and  resulted  in  an  order  entered  against  the 
State  Board  of  Equalization,  demanding  that  it  tax  the 
corporations  mentioned  in  the  bill.  In  spite  of  the  fact 
that  the  defendant  companies  sought  federal  aid  and 
obtained  an  order  which  restrained  the  payment  of  a 
portion  of  the  tax,  each  year  since  1900,  the  Chicago 
Board  of  Education  has  benefited  to  the  extent  of 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars.  Although  this 
result  had  been  attained  through  the  unaided  efforts  of 
the  teachers,  to  their  surprise  and  indignation  their 


302  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

salaries  were  not  increased.  The  Teachers’  Federation, 
therefore,  brought  a  suit  against  the  Board  of  Education 
for  the  advance  which  had  been  promised  them  three 
years  earlier  but  never  paid.  The  decision  of  the  lower 
s  court  was  in  their  favor  but  the  Board  of  Education 
appealed  the  case,  and  this  was  the  situation  when  the 
seven  new  members  appointed  by  Mayor  Dunne0  in 
1905  took  their  seats.  The  conservative  public  suspect¬ 
ed  that  these  new  members  were  merely  representatives 
oof  the  Teachers’  Federation.  This  opinion  was  founded 
upon  the  fact  that  Judge  Dunne  had  rendered  a  favor¬ 
able  decision  in  the  teachers’  suit  and  that  the  teachers 
had  been  very  active  in  the  campaign  which  had  re¬ 
sulted  in  his  election  as  mayor  of  the  city.  It  seemed 
s  obvious  that  the  teachers  had  entered  into  politics  for 
the  sake  of  securing  their  own  representatives  on  the 
Board  of  Education.  These  suspicions  were,  of  course, 
only  confirmed  when  the  new  board  voted  to  withdraw 
the  suit  of  their  predecessors  from  the  Appellate  Court 
o  and  to  act  upon  the  decision  of  the  lower  court.  The 
teachers,  on  the  other  hand,  defended  their  long  effort 
in  the  courts,  the  State  Board  of  Equalization,  and  the 
Legislature,  against  the  charge  of  “dragging  the  schools 
into  politics,”  and  declared  that  the  exposure  of  the 
s  indifference  and  cupidity  of  the  politicians  was  a  well- 
deserved  rebuke,  and  that  it  was  the  politicians  who 
had  brought  the  schools  to  the  verge  of  financial  ruin; 
they  further  insisted  that  the  levy  and  collection  of 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


303 


taxes,  tenure  of  office,  and  pensions  to  civil  servants  in 
Chicago  were  all  entangled  with  the  traction  situation, 
which  in  their  minds  at  least  had  come  to  be  an  example 
of  the  struggle  between  the  democratic  and  plutocratic 
administration  of  city  affairs.  The  new  appointees  to  5 
the  School  Board  represented  no  concerted  policy  of 
any  kind,  but  were  for  the  most  part  adherents  to  the 
new  education.  The  teachers,  confident  that  their 
cause  was  identical  with  the  principles  advocated  by 
such  educators  as  Colonel  Parker,0  were  therefore  sure  1 
that  the  plans  of  the  “new  education”  members  would 
of  necessity  coincide  with  the  plans  of  the  Teachers’ 
Federation.  In  one  sense  the  situation  was  an  epitome 
of  Mayor  Dunne’s  entire  administration,  which  was 
founded  upon  the  belief  that  if  those  citizens  represent-  1 
ing  social  ideals  and  reform  principles  were  but  ap¬ 
pointed  to  office,  public  welfare  must  be  established. 

During  my  tenure  of  office  I  many  times  talked  to 
the  officers  of  the  Teachers’  Federation,  but  I  was 
seldom  able  to  follow  their  suggestions  and,  although  I  2 
gladly  cooperated  in  their  plans  for  a  better  pension 
system  and  other  matters,  only  once  did  I  try  to  in¬ 
fluence  the  policy  of  the  Federation.  When  the  with¬ 
held  salaries  were  finally  paid  to  the  representatives  of 
the  Federation  who  had  brought  suit  and  were  divided  2 
among  the  members  who  had  suffered  both  financially 
and  professionally  during  this  long  legal  struggle,  I  wras 
most  anxious  that  the  division  should  voluntarily  be 


3o4  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

extended  to  all  of  the  teachers  who  had  experienced  a 
loss  of  salary  although  they  were  not  members  of  the 
Federation.  It  seemed  to  me  a  striking  opportunity  to 
refute  the  charge  that  the  Federation  was  self-seeking 
5  and  to  put  the  whole  long  effort  in  the  minds  of 
the  public,  exactly  where  it  belonged,  as  one  of  de¬ 
voted  public  service.  But  it  was  doubtless  much  easier 
for  me  to  urge  this  altruistic  policy  than  it  was  for 
those  who  had  borne  the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day, 
oto  act  upon  it. 

The  second  object  of  the  Teachers’  Federation  also 
entailed  much  stress  and  storm.  At  the  time  of  the 
financial  stringency,  and  largely  as  a  result  of  it,  the 
Board  had  made  the  first  substantial  advance  in  a 
5  teacher’s  salary  dependent  upon  a  so-called  promotional 
examination,  half  of  which  was  upon  academic  subjects 
entailing  a  long  and  severe  preparation.  The  teachers 
resented  this  upon  two  lines  of  argument:  first,  that 
the  scheme  was  unprofessional  in  that  the  teacher  was 
o  advanced  on  her  capacity  as  a  student  rather  than  on 
her  professional  ability;  and,  second,  that  it  added  an 
intolerable  and  unnecessary  burden  to  her  already  over¬ 
full  day.  The  administration,  on  the  other  hand,  con¬ 
tended  with  much  justice  that  there  was  a  constant 
s  danger  in  a  great  public  school  system  that  teachers 
lose  pliancy  and  the  open  mind,  and  that  many  of  them 
had  obviously  grown  mechanical  and  indifferent.  The 
conservative  public  approved  the  promotional  examina- 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


305 


tions  as  the  symbol  of  an  advancing  educational  stand¬ 
ard,  and  their  sympathy  with  the  superintendent  was 
increased  because  they  continually  resented  the  affilia¬ 
tion  of  the  Teachers’  Federation  with  the  Chicago 
Federation  of  Labor  which  had  taken  place  several  5 
years  before  the  election  of  Mayor  Dunne  on  his 
traction  platform. 

This  much  talked  of  affiliation  between  the  teachers 
and  the  trades-unionists  had  been,  at  least  in  the  first 
instance,  but  one  more  tactic  in  the  long  struggle  against  1  o 
the  tax-dodging  corporations.  The  Teachers’  Federa¬ 
tion  had  won  in  their  first  skirmish  against  that  public 
indifference  which  is  generated  in  the  accumulation  of 
wealth  and  which  has  for  its  nucleus  successful  com¬ 
mercial  men.  When  they  found  themselves  in  need  of  1 5 
further  legislation  to  keep  the  offending  corporations 
under  control,  they  naturally  turned  for  political  in¬ 
fluence  and  votes  to  the  organization  representing 
workingmen.  The  affiliation  had  none  of  the  sinister 
meaning  8b  often  attached  to  it.  The  Teachers’  Federa-  20 
tion  never  obtained  a  charter  from  the  American  Federa¬ 
tion  of  Labor  and  its  main  interest  always  centered  in 
the  legislative  committee. 

And  yet  this  statement  of  the  difference  between  the 
majority  of  the  grade  school  teachers  and  the  Chicago  25 
School  Board  is  totally  inadequate,  for  the  difficulties 
were  stubborn  and  lay  far  back  in  the  long  effort  of 
public  school  administration  in  America  to  free  itself 


3o6  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

from  the  rule  and  exploitation  of  politics.  In  every 
city  for  many  years  the  politician  had  secured  positions 
for  his  friends  as  teachers  and  janitors;  he  had  received 
a  rake-off  in  the  contract  for  every  new  building  or  coal 
5  supply  or  adoption  of  schoolbooks.  In  the  long  struggle 
against  this  political  corruption,  the  one  remedy  con¬ 
tinually  advocated  was  the  transfer  of  authority  in  all 
educational  matters  from  the  Board  to  the  super¬ 
intendent.  The  one  cure  for  “pull”  and  corruption 
owas  the  authority  of  the  “expert.”  The  rules  and 
records  of  the  Chicago  Board  of  Education  are  full  of 
relics  of  this  long  struggle  honestly  waged  by  honest 
men,  who  unfortunately  became  content  with  the 
ideals  of  an  “efficient  business  administration.”  These 
5  business  men  established  an  able  superintendent  with  a 
large  salary,  with  his  tenure  of  office  secured  by  state 
law  so  that  he  would  not  be  disturbed  by  the  wrath  of 
the  balked  politician.  They  instituted  impersonal  ex¬ 
aminations  for  the  teachers  both  as  to  entrance  into 
othe  system  and  promotion,  and  they  proceeded  “to 
hold  the  superintendent  responsible”  for  smooth¬ 
running  schools.  All  this  however  dangerously  approxi¬ 
mated  the  commercialistic  ideal  of  high  salaries  only 
for  the  management  with  the  final  test  of  a  small  ex- 
s  pense  account  and  a  large  output. 

In  this  long  struggle  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  to  free 
the  public  schools  from  political  interference,  in  Chicago 
at  least,  the  high  wall  of  defense  erected  around  the 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


307 


school  system  in  order  “to  keep  the  rascals  out,”  un¬ 
fortunately  so  restricted  the  teachers  inside  the  system 
that  they  had  no  space  in  which  to  move  about  freely 
and  the  more  adventurous  of  them  fairly  panted  for 
light  and  air.  Any  attempt  to  lower  the  wall  for  the 
sake  of  the  teachers  within  was  regarded  as  giving  an 
opportunity  to  the  politicians  without,  and  they  were 
often  openly  accused,  with  a  show  of  truth,  of  being  in 
league  with  each  other.  Whenever  the  Dunne  members 
of  the  Board  attempted  to  secure  more  liberty  for  the 
teachers,  we  were  warned  by  tales  of  former  difficulties 
with  the  politicians,  and  it  seemed  impossible  that  the 
struggle,  so  long  the  focus  of  attention,  should  recede 
into  the  dullness  of  the  achieved  and  allow  the  energy 
of  the  Board*  to  be  free  for  new  effort. 

The  whole  situation  between  the  superintendent,  sup¬ 
ported  by  a  majority  of  the  Board,  and  the  Teachers’ 
Federation  had  become  an  epitome  of  the  struggle  be¬ 
tween  efficiency  and  democracy;  on  one  side  a  well- 
intentioned  expression  of  the  bureaucracy  necessary  in 
a  large  system  but  which  under  pressure  had  become 
unnecessarily  self-assertive,  and  on  the  other  side  a 
fairly  militant  demand  for  self-government  made  in 
the  name  of  freedom.  Both  sides  inevitably  exagger¬ 
ated  the  difficulties  of  the  situation  and  both  felt  that 
they  were  standing  by  important  principles. 

1  certainly  played  a  most  inglorious  part  in  this  un¬ 
necessary  conflict;  I  was  chairman  of  the  School  Man- 


3o8  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

agement  Committee  during  one  year  when  a  majority 
of  the  members  seemed  to  me  exasperatingly  con¬ 
servative,  and  during  another  year  when  they  were 
frustratingly  radical,  and  I  was  of  course  highly  un- 
s  satisfactory  to  both.  Certainly  a  plan  to  retain  the  un¬ 
doubted  benefit  of  required  study  for  teachers  in  such 
wise  as  to  lessen  its  burden,  and  various  schemes  de¬ 
vised  to  shift  the  emphasis  from  scholarship  to  pro¬ 
fessional  work,  were  most  impatiently  repudiated  by 
o  the  Teachers’  Federation,  and  when  one  badly  mutilated 
plan  finally  passed  the  Board,  it  was  most  reluctantly 
administered  by  the  superintendent. 

I  at  least  became  convinced  that  partisans  would 
never  tolerate  the  use  of  stepping-stones.  They  are 
s  much  too  impatient  to  look  on  while  t*heir  beloved 
scheme  is  unstably  balanced,  and  they  would  rather  see 
it  tumble  into  the  stream  at  once  than  to  have  it 
brought  to  dry  land  in  any  such  half-hearted  fashion. 
Before  my  School  Board  experience,  I  thought  that  life 
ohad  taught  me  at  least  one  hard-earned  lesson,  that 
existing  arrangements  and  the  hoped  for  improvements 
must  be  mediated  and  reconciled  to  each  other,  that 
the  new  must  be  dovetailed  into  the  old  as  it  were,  if  it 
were  to  endure;  but  on  the  School  Board  I  discerned 
5  that  all  such  efforts  were  looked  upon  as  compromising 
and  unworthy,  by  both  partisans.  In  the  general  dis¬ 
order  and  public  excitement  resulting  from  the  illegal 
dismissal  of  a  majority  of  the  “  Dunne”  board  and 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


309 


their  reinstatement  by  a  court  decision,  I  found  myself 
belonging  to  neither  party.  During  the  months  follow¬ 
ing  the  upheaval  and  the  loss  of  my  most  vigorous 
colleagues,  under  the  regime  of  men  representing  the 
leading  Commercial  Club  of  the  city  who  honestly 
believed  that  they  were  rescuing  the  schools  from  a 
condition  of  chaos,  I  saw  one  beloved  measure  after 
another  withdrawn.  Although  the  new  president  scru¬ 
pulously  gave  me  the  floor  in  the  defense  of  each,  it  was 
impossible  to  consider  them  upon  their  merits  in  the 
lurid  light  which  at  the  moment  enveloped  all  the 
plans  of  the  “uplifters.”  Thus  the  building  of  smaller 
schoolrooms,  such  as  in  New  York  mechanically  avoid 
overcrowding;  the  extension  of  the  truant  rooms  so  suc¬ 
cessfully  inaugurated,  the  multiplication  of  school  play¬ 
grounds  and  many  another  cherished  plan  was  thrown 
out  or  at  least  indefinitely  postponed. 

The  final  discrediting  of  Mayor  Dunne’s  appointees 
to  the  School  Board  affords  a  very  interesting  study  in 
social  psychology;  the  newspapers  had  so  constantly 
reflected  and  intensified  the  ideals  of  a  business  Board, 
and  had  so  persistently  ridiculed  various  administration 
plans  for  the  municipal  ownership  of  street  railways, 
that  from  the  beginning  any  attempt  the  new  Board 
made  to  discuss  educational  matters,  only  excited  their 
derision  and  contempt.  Some  of  these  discussions  were 
lengthy  and  disorderly  and  deserved  the  discipline  of 
ridicule,  but  others  which  were  well  conducted  and  in 


3io  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

which  educational  problems  were  seriously  set  forth  by 
men  of  authority,  were  ridiculed  quite  as  sharply.  I 
recall  the  surprise  and  indignation  of  a  University  pro¬ 
fessor  who  had  consented  to  speak  at  a  meeting  ar- 
s  ranged  in  the  Board  rooms,  when  next  morning  his  non¬ 
partisan  and  careful  disquisition  had  been  twisted  into 
the  most  arrant  uplift  nonsense  and  so  connected  with 
a  fake  newspaper  report  of  a  trial  marriage  address  de¬ 
livered,  not  by  himself,  but  by  a  colleague,  that  a  lead- 
oing  clergyman  of  the  city,  having  read  the  newspaper 
account,  felt  impelled  to  preach  a  sermon,  calling  upon 
all  decent  people  to  rally  against  the  doctrines  which 
were  being  taught  to  the  children  by  an  immoral  School 
Board.  As  the  bewildered  professor  had  lectured  in 
5  response  to  my  invitation,  I  endeavored  to  find  the 
animus  of  the  complication,  but  neither  from  editor  in 
chief  nor  from  the  reporter  could  I  discover  anything 
more  sinister  than  that  the  public  expected  a  good 
story  out  of  these  School  Board  “talk  fests,”  and  that 
o  any  man  who  even  momentarily  allied  himself  with  a 
radical  administration,  must  expect  to  be  ridiculed  by 
those  papers  which  considered  the  traction  policy  of 
the  administration  both  foolish  and  dangerous. 

As  I  myself  was  treated  with  uniform  courtesy  by 
5  the  leading  papers,  I  may  perhaps  here  record  my  dis¬ 
couragement  over  this  complicated  difficulty  of  open 
discussion,  for  democratic  government  is  founded  upon 
the  assumption  that  differing  policies  shall  be  freely  dis- 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


3ii 

cussed  and  that  each  party  shall  have  an  opportunity 
for  at  least  a  partisan  presentation  of  its  contentions. 
This  attitude  of  the  newspapers  was  doubtless  intensi¬ 
fied  because  the  Dunne  School  Board  had  instituted  a 
lawsuit  challenging  the  validity  of  the  lease  for  the  5 
school  ground  occupied  by  a  newspaper  building.  This 
suit  has  since  been  decided  in  favor  of  the  newspaper, 
and  it  may  be  that  in  their  resentment  they  felt  justified 
in  doing  everything  possible  to  minimize  the  prosecuting 
School  Board.  I  am,  however,  inclined  to  think  that  10 
the  newspapers  but  reflected  an  opinion  honestly  held 
by  many  people,  and  that  their  constant  and  partisan 
presentation  of  this  opinion  clearly  demonstrates  one 
of  the  greatest  difficulties  of  governmental  administra¬ 
tion  in  a  city  grown  too  large  for  verbal  discussions  of  1 5 
public  affairs. 

It  is  difficult  to  close  this  chapter  without  a  reference 
to  the  efforts  made  in  Chicago  to  secure  the  municipal 
franchise  for  women.  During  two  long  periods  of 
agitation  for  a  new  city  charter,  a  representative  body  20 
of  women  appealed  to  the  public,  to  the  charter  con¬ 
vention,  and  to  the  Illinois  legislature  for  this  very 
reasonable  provision.  During  the  campaign  when  I  v' 
acted  as  chairman  of  the  federation  of  a  hundred 
women’s  organizations,  nothing  impressed  me  so  25 
forcibly  as  the  fact  that  the  response  came  from  bodies 
of  women  representing  the  most  varied  traditions.  We 
were  joined  by  a  church  society  of  hundreds  of  Lutheran 


312  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

women,  because  Scandinavian  women  had  exercised 
the  municipal  franchise  since  the  seventeenth  century 
and  had  found  American  cities  strangely  conservative; 
by  organizations  of  working  women,  who  had  keenly 
5  felt  the  need  of  the  municipal  franchise  in  order  to 
secure  for  their  workshops  the  most  rudimentary 
sanitation  and  the  consideration  which  the  vote  alone 
obtains  for  workingmen;  by  federations  of  mothers’ 
meetings,  who  were  interested  in  clean  milk  and  the 
o  extension  of  kindergartens;  by  property-owning  women, 
who  had  been  powerless  to  protest  against  unjust  taxa¬ 
tion;  by  organizations  of  professional  women,  of  uni¬ 
versity  students,  and  of  collegiate  alumnae;  and  by 
women’s  clubs  interested  in  municipal  reforms.  There 
s  was  a  complete  absence  of  the  traditional  women’s 
rights  clamor,  but  much  impressive  testimony  from 
busy  and  useful  women  that  they  had  reached  the 
place  where  they  needed  the  franchise  in  order  to  carry 
on  their  own  affairs.  A  striking  witness  as  to  the  need 
oof  the  ballot,  even  for  the  women  who  are  restricted  to 
the  most  primitive  and  traditional  activities,  occurred 
when  some  Russian  women  waited  upon  me  to  ask 
whether  under  the  new  charter,  they  could  vote  for 
covered  markets  and  so  get  rid  of  the  shocking  Chicago 
5 grime  upon  all  their  food;  and  when  some  neighboring 
Italian  women  sent  me  word  that  they  would  certainly 
vote  for  public  washhouses  if  they  ever  had  the  chance 
to  vote  at  all  It  was  all  so  human,  so  spontaneous,  and 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


3i3 


so  direct  that  it  really  seemed  as  if  the  time  must  be 
ripe  for  political  expression  of  that  public  concern  on  the 
part  of  women  which  has  so  long  been  forced  to  seek 
indirection.  None  of  these  busy  women  wished  to  take 
the  place  of  men  nor  to  influence  them  in  the  direction 
of  men’s  affairs,  but  they  did  seek  an  opportunity  to 
cooperate  directly  in  civic  life  through  the  use  of  the 
ballot  in  regard  to  their  own  affairs. 

A  Municipal  Museum  which  was  established  in  the 
Chicago  public  library  building  several  years  ago, 
largely  through  the  activity  of  a  group  of  women  who 
had  served  as  jurors  in  the  departments  of  social 
economy,  of  education,  and  of  sanitation  in  the  World’s 
Fair  at  St.  Louis,0  showed  nothing  more  clearly  than 
that  it  is  impossible  to  divide  any  of  these  departments 
from  the  political  life  of  the  modern  city  which  is  con¬ 
stantly  forced  to  enlarge  the  boundary  of  its  activity. 


CHAPTER  XV 

The  Value  of  Social  Clubs 

From  the  early  days  at  Hull-House,  social  clubs  com¬ 
posed  of  English  speaking  American  born  young  people 
grew  apace.  So  eager  were  they  for  social  life  that  no 
mistakes  in  management  could  drive  them  away.  I 
5  remember  one  enthusiastic  leader  who  read  aloud  to  a 
club  a  translation  of  “Antigone/’0  which  she  had 
selected  because  she  believed  that  the  great  themes  of 
the  Greek  poets  were  best  suited  to  young  people.  She 
came  into  the  club  room  one  evening  in  time  to  hear  the 
i  o  president  call  the  restive  members  to  order  with  the 
statement,  “You  might  just  as  well  keep  quiet  for  she 
is  bound  to  finish  it,  and  the  quicker  she  gets  to  reading, 
the  longer  time  we’ll  have  for  dancing.’’  And  yet  the 
same  club  leader  had  the  pleasure  of  lending  four  copies 
i  s  of  the  drama  to  four  of  the  members,  and  one  young  man 
almost  literally  committed  the  entire  play  to  memory. 

On  the  whole  we  were  much  impressed  by  the  great 
desire  for  self-improvement,  for  study  and  debate,  ex¬ 
hibited  by  many  of  the  young  men.  This  very  tendency, 
20  in  fact,  brought  one  of  the  most  promising  of  our  earlier 
clubs  to  an  untimely  end.  The  young  men  in  the  club, 
twenty  in  number,  had  grown  much  irritated  by  the 


3I4 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


3IS 


frivolity  of  the  girls  during  their  long  debates,  and  had 
finally  proposed  that  three  of  the  most  '‘frivolous”  be 
expelled.  Pending  a  final  vote,  the  three  culprits  ap¬ 
pealed  to  certain  of  their  friends  who  were  members  of 
the  Hull-House  Men’s  Club,  between  whom  and  the  de¬ 
bating  young  men  the  incident  became  the  cause  of  a 
quarrel  so  bitter  that  at  length  it  led  to  a  shooting. 
Fortunately  the  shot  missed  fire,  or  it  may  have  been 
true  that  it  was  “only  intended  for  a  scare,”  but  at  any 
rate,  we  were  all  thoroughly  frightened  by  this  mani¬ 
festation  of  the  hot  blood  which  the  defense  of  woman 
has  so  often  evoked.  After  many  efforts  to  bring  about 
a  reconciliation,  the  debating  club  of  twenty  young  men 
and  the  seventeen  young  women,  who  either  were  or 
pretended  to  be  sober  minded,  rented  a  hall  a  mile  west 
of  Hull-House  severing  their  connection  with  us  be¬ 
cause  their  ambitious  and  right-minded  efforts  had  been 
unappreciated,  basing  this  on  the  ground  that  we  had 
not  urged  the  expulsion  of  the  so-called  “tough”  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Men’s  Club,  who  had  been  involved  in  the 
difficulty.  The  seceding  club  invited  me  to  the  first 
meeting  in  their  new  quarters  that  I  might  present  to 
them  my  version  of  the  situation  and  set  forth  the 
incident  from  the  standpoint  of  Hull-House.  The  dis¬ 
cussion  I  had  with  the  young  people  that  evening  has 
always  remained  with  me  as  one  of  the  moments  of 
illumination  which  life  in  a  Settlement  so  often  affords. 
In  response  to  my  position  that  a  desire  to  avoid  all 


3 16  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  was  “tough”  meant  to  walk  only  in  the  paths  of 
smug  self-seeking  and  personal  improvement  leading 
straight  into  the  pit  of  self-righteousness  and  petty 
achievement  and  was  exactly  what  the  Settlement  did 
5  not  stand  for,  they  contended  with  much  justice  that 
ambitious  young  people  were  obliged  for  their  own 
reputation,  if  not  for  their  own  morals,  to  avoid  all 
connection  with  that  which  bordered  on  the  tough,  and 
that  it  was  quite  another  matter  for  the  Hull-House 
o  residents  who  could  afford  a  more  generous  judgment. 
It  was  in  vain  I  urged  that  life  teaches  us  nothing  more 
inevitably  than  that  right  and  wrong  are  most  con¬ 
fusingly  confounded;  that  the  blackest  wrong  may  be 
within  our  own  motives,  and  that  at  the  best,  right  will 
5  not  dazzle  us  by  its  radiant  shining,  and  can  only  be 
found  by  exerting  patience  and  discrimination.  They 
still  maintained  their  wholesome  bourgeois  position, 
which  I  am  now  quite  ready  to  admit  was  most  reason¬ 
able. 

o  Of  course  there  were  many  disappointments  con¬ 
nected  with  these  clubs  when  the  rewards  of  political 
and  commercial  life  easily  drew  the  members  away  from 
the  principles  advocated  in  club  meetings.  One  of  the 
young  men  who  had  been  a  shining  light  in  the  advocacy 
5  of  municipal  reform,  deserted  in  the  middle  of  a  reform 
campaign  because  he  had  been  offered  a  lucrative  office 
in  the  City  Hall;  another  even  after  a  course  of  lectures 
on  business  morality,  “worked”  the  club  itself  to 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


3U 


secure  orders  for  custom-made  clothing  from  samples 
of  cloth  he  displayed,  although  the  orders  were  filled  by 
ready-made  suits  slightly  refitted  and  delivered  at 
double  their  original  price.  But  nevertheless,  there  was 
much  to  cheer  us  as  we  gradually  became  acquainted 
with  the  daily  living  of  the  vigorous  young  men  and 
women  who  filled  to  overflowing  all  the  social  clubs. 

We  have  been  much  impressed  during  our  twenty 
years,  by  the  ready  adaptation  of  city  young  people  to 
the  prosperity  arising  from  their  own  increased  wages 
or  from  the  commercial  success  of  their  families.  This 
quick  adaptability  is  the  great  gift  of  the  city  child,  his 
one  reward  for  the  hurried  changing  life  which  he  has 
always  led.  The  working  girl  has  a  distinct  advantage 
in  the  task  of  transforming  her  whole  family  into  the 
ways  and  connections  of  the  prosperous  when  she  works 
down  town  and  becomes  conversant  with  the  manners 
and  conditions  of  a  cosmopolitan  community.  There¬ 
fore  having  lived  in  a  Settlement  twenty  years,  I  see 
scores  of  young  people  who  have  successfully  established 
themselves  in  life,  and  in  my  travels  in  the  city  and  out¬ 
side,  I  am  constantly  cheered  by  greetings  from  the 
rising  young  lawyer,  the  scholarly  rabbi,  the  successful 
teacher,  the  prosperous  young  matron  buying  clothes 
for  her  blooming  children.  “Don’t  you  remember  me? 
I  used  to  belong  to  a  Hull-House  club.”  I  once  asked 
one  of  these  young  people,  a  man  who  held  a  good 
position  on  a  Chicago  daily,  what  special  thing  Hull- 


3 1 8  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

House  had  meant  to  him,  and  he  promptly  replied: 
“It  was  the  first  house  I  had  ever  been  in  where  books 
and  magazines  just  lay  around  as  if  there  were  plenty 
of  them  in  the  world.  Don’t  you  remember  how  much 
5 1  used  to  read  at  that  little  round  table  at  the  back  of 
the  library?  To  have  people  regard  reading  as  a  rea¬ 
sonable  occupation  changed  the  whole  aspect  of  life  to 
me  and  I  began  to  have  confidence  in  what  I  could  do.” 

Among  the  young  men  of  the  social  clubs  a  large 
o  proportion  of  the  Jewish  ones  at  least  obtain  the  ad¬ 
vantages  of  a  higher  education.  The  parents  make  every 
sacrifice  to  help  them  through  the  high  school  after 
which  the  young  men  attend  universities  and  pro¬ 
fessional  schools,  largely  through  their  own  efforts. 
5  From  time  to  time  they  come  back  to  us  with  their 
honors  thick  upon  them;  I  remember  one  who  returned 
with  the  prize  in  oratory  from  a  contest  between  several 
Western  state  universities,  proudly  testifying  that  he 
had  obtained  his  confidence  in  our  Henry  Clay  Club; 
o  another  came  back  with  a  degree  from  Harvard  Uni¬ 
versity  saying  that  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  go  there 
the  summer  I  read  Royce’s0  “Aspects  of  Modern 
Philosophy”  with  a  group  of  young  men  who  had 
challenged  my  scathing  remark  that  Herbert  Spencer 
5  was  not  the  only  man  who  had  ventured  a  solution  of 
the  riddles  of  the  universe.  Occasionally  one  of  these 
learned  young  folk  does  not  like  to  be  reminded  that 
he  once  lived  in  our  vicinity,  but  that  happens  rarely, 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


3i9 


and  for  the  most  part  they  are  loyal  to  us  in  much  the 
same  spirit  as  they  are  to  their  own  families  and 
traditions.  Sometimes  they  go  further  and  tell  us  that 
the  standards  of  tastes  and  code  of  manners  which  Hull- 
House  has  enabled  them  to  form,  have  made  a  very  5 
great  difference  in  their  perceptions  and  estimates  of 
the  larger  world  as  well  as  in  their  own  reception  there. 
Five  out  of  one  club  of  twenty-five  young  men  who  had 
held  together  for  eleven  years,  entered  the  University 
of  Chicago  but  although  the  rest  of  the  Club  called  them  1 
the  “intellectuals,”  the  old  friendships  still  held. 

In  addition  to  these  rising  young  people  given  to  de¬ 
bate  and  dramatics,  and  to  the  members  of  the  public 
school  alumni  associations  which  meet  in  our  rooms, 
there  are  hundreds  of  others  who  for  years  have  come  1 
to  Hull-House  frankly  in  search  of  that  pleasure  and 
recreation  which  all  young  things  crave  and  which  those 
who  have  spent  long  hours  in  a  factory  or  shop  demand 
as  a  right.  For  these  young  people  all  sorts  of  pleasure 
clubs  have  been  cherished,  and  large  dancing  classes  2 
have  been  organized.  One  supreme  gayety  has  come 
to  be  an  annual  event  of  such  importance  that  it  is 
talked  of  from  year  to  year.  For  six  wTeeks  before  St. 
Patrick’s  day,  a  small  group  of  residents  put  their  best 
powers  of  invention  and  construction  into  preparation  2 
for  a  cotillion  which  is  like  a  pageant  in  its  gayety  and 
vigor.  The  parents  sit  in  the  gallery,  and  the  mothers 
appreciate  more  than  any  one  else  perhaps,  the  value 


320  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

of  this  ball  to  which  an  invitation  is  so  highly  prized; 
although  their  standards  of  manners  may  differ  widely 
from  the  conventional,  they  know  full  well  when  the 
'companionship  of  the  young  people  is  safe  and  unsullied, 
s  As  an  illustration  of  this  difference  in  standard,  I 
may  instance  an  early  Hull-House  picnic  arranged  by 
a  club  of  young  people,  who  found  at  the  last  moment 
that  the  club  director  could  not  go  and  accepted  the 
offer  of  the  mother  of  one  of  the  club  members  to  take 
o  charge  of  them.  When  they  trooped  back  in  the  even¬ 
ing,  tired  and  happy,  they  displayed  a  photograph  of 
the  group  wherein  each  man’s  arm  was  carefully  placed 
about  a  girl;  no  feminine  waist  lacked  an  arm  save  that 
of  the  proud  chaperon,  who  sat  in  the  middle  smiling 
s  upon  all.  Seeing  that  the  photograph  somewhat  sur¬ 
prised  us,  the  chaperon  stoutly  explained,  “This  may 
look  queer  to  you,  but  there  wasn’t  one  thing  about  that 
picnic  that  wasn’t  nice,”  and  her  statement  was  a  per¬ 
fectly  truthful  one. 

o  Although  more  conventional  customs  are  carefully 
enforced  at  our  many  parties  and  festivities,  and  while 
the  dancing  classes  are  as  highly  prized  for  the  opportu¬ 
nity  they  afford  for  enforcing  standards  as  for  their 
ostensible  aim,  the  residents  at  Hull-House,  in  their 
s  efforts  to  provide  opportunities  for  clean  recreation, 
receive  the  most  valued  help  from  the  experienced 
wisdom  of  the  older  women  of  the  neighborhood. 
Bowen  Flail  is  constantly  used  for  dancing  parties  with 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


321 


soft  drinks  established  in  its  foyer.  The  parties  given 
by  the  Hull-House  clubs  are  by  invitation  and  the 
young  people  themselves  carefully  maintain  their  stand¬ 
ard  of  entrance  so  that  the  most  cautious  mother  may 
feel  safe  when  her  daughter  goes  to  one  of  our  parties. 
No  club  festivity  is  permitted  without  the  presence  of 
a  director;  no  young  man  under  the  influence  of  liquor 
is  allowed;  certain  types  of  dancing,  often  innocently 
started,  are  strictly  prohibited;  and  above  all,  early 
closing  is  insisted  upon.  This  standardizing  of  pleasure 
has  always  seemed  an  obligation  to  the  residents  of 
Hull-House,  but  we  are,  I  hope,  saved  from  that 
priggishness  which  young  people  so  heartily  resent,  by 
the  Mardi  Gras°  dance  and  other  festivities  which  the 
residents  themselves  arrange  and  successfully  carry  out. 

In  spite  of  our  belief  that  the  standards  of  a  ball  may 
be  almost  as  valuable  to  those  without  as  to  those  with¬ 
in,  the  residents  are  constantly  concerned  for  those 
many  young  people  in  the  neighborhood  who  are  too 
hedonistic  to  submit  to  the  discipline  of  a  dancing  class 
or  even  to  the  claim  of  a  pleasure  club,  but  who  go  about 
in  freebooter  fashion  to  find  pleasure  wherever  it  may 
be  cheaply  on  sale. 

Such  young  people,  well  meaning  but  impatient  of 
control,  become  the  easy  victims  of  the  worst  type  of 
public  dance  halls  and  of  even  darker  places,  whose 
purposes  are  hidden  under  music  and  dancing.  We 
were  thoroughly  frightened  when  we  learned  that  during 


322  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  year  which  ended  last  December,  more  than  twenty- 
five  thousand  young  people  under  the  age  of  twenty-five 
passed  through  the  Juvenile  and  Municipal  Courts  of 
Chicago  —  approximately  one  out  of  every  eighty  of 
s  the  entire  population,  or  one  out  of  every  fifty-two  of 
those  under  twenty-five  years  of  age.  One’s  heart  aches 
for  these  young  people  caught  by  the  outside  glitter  of 
city  gayety,  who  make  such  a  feverish  attempt  to 
snatch  it  for  themselves.  The  young  people  in  our  clubs 
joare  comparatively  safe,  but  many  instances  come  to 
the  knowledge  of  Hull-House  residents  which  make  us 
long  for  the  time  when  the  city,  through  more  small 
parks,  municipal  gymnasiums,  and  schoolrooms  open 
for  recreation,  can  guard  from  disaster  these  young 

1  s  people  who  walk  so  carelessly  on  the  edge  of  the  pit. 

The  heedless  girls  believe  that  if  they  lived  in  big 
houses  and  possessed  pianos  and  jewelry,  the  coveted 
social  life  would  come  to  them.  I  know  a  Bohemian 
girl  who  surreptitiously  saved  her  overtime  wages  until 
20  she  had  enough  money  to  hire  for  a  week  a  room  with  a 
piano  in  it  where  young  men  might  come  to  call,  as  they 
could  not  do  in  her  crowded  untidy  home.  Of  course 
she  had  no  way  of  knowing  the  sort  of  young  men  who 
quickly  discover  an  unprotected  girl. 

2  5  Another  girl  of  American  parentage  who  had  come 

to  Chicago  to  seek  her  fortune,  found  at  the  end  of  a 
year  that  sorting  shipping  receipts  in  a  dark  corner  of 
a  warehouse  not  only  failed  to  accumulate  riches  but 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


323 

did  not  even  bring  the  “attentions”  which  her  quiet 
country  home  afforded.  By  dint  of  long  sacrifice  she 
had  saved  fifteen  dollars;  with  five  she  bought  an 
imitation  sapphire  necklace,  and  the  balance  she 
changed  into  a  ten  dollar  bill.  The  evening  her  pathetic  5 
little  snare  was  set,  she  walked  home  with  one  of  the 
clerks  in  the  establishment,  told  him  that  she  had  come 
into  a  fortune,  and  was  obliged  to  wear  the  heirloom 
necklace  to  insure  its  safety,  permitted  him  to  see  that 
she  carried  ten  dollars  in  her  glove  for  carfare  and  con-  10 
ducted  him  to  a  handsome  Prairie  Avenue  residence. 
There  she  gayly  bade  him  good-by  and  ran  up  the  steps 
shutting  herself  in  the  vestibule  from  which  she  did  not 
emerge  until  the  dazzled  and  bewildered  young  man 
had  vanished  down  the  street.  is 

Then  there  is  the  ever  recurring  difficulty  about  dress; 
the  insistence  of  the  young  to  be  gayly  bedecked  to  the 
utter  consternation  of  the  hardworking  parents  who 
are  paying  for  a  house  and  lot.  The  Polish  girl  who 
stole  five  dollars  from  her  employer’s  till  with  which  to  20 
buy  a  white  dress  for  a  church  picnic  was  turned  away 
from  home  by  her  indignant  father,  who  replaced  the 
money  to  save  the  family  honor,  but  would  harbor  no 
“thief”  in  a  household  of  growing  children  who,  in 
spite  of  the  sister’s  revolt,  continued  to  be  dressed  in  2  5 
dark  heavy  clothes  through  all  the  hot  summer.  There 
are  a  multitude  of  working  girls  who  for  hours  carry 
hair  ribbons  and  jewelry  in  their  pockets  or  stockings, 


324  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

for  the}^  can  wear  them*only  during  the  journey  to  and 
from  work.  Sometimes  this  desire  to  taste  pleasure,  to 
escape  into  a  world  of  congenial  companionship,  takes 
more  elaborate  forms  and  often  ends  disastrously.  I 
5  recall  a  charming  young  girl,  the  oldest  daughter  of  a 
respectable  German  family,  whom  I  first  saw  one  spring 
afternoon  issuing  from  a  tall  factory.  She  wore  a  blue 
print  gown  which  so  deepened  the  blue  of  her  eyes  that 
Wordsworth’s  line  fairly  sung  itself: — 

o  The  pliant  harebell  swinging  in  the  breeze 

On  some  gray  rock. 

I  was  grimly  reminded  of  that  moment  a  year  later 
when  I  heard  the  tale  of  this  seventeen-year-old  girl, 
who  had  worked  steadily  in  the  same  factory  for  four 
s years  before  she  resolved  “to  see  life.”  In  order  not  to 
arouse  her  parents’  suspicions,  she  borrowed  thirty 
dollars  from  one  of  those  loan  sharks  who  require  no 
security  from  a  pretty  girl,  so  that  she  might  start  from 
home  every  morning  as  if  to  go  to  work.  For  three 
o  weeks  she  spent  the  first  part  of  each  dearly  bought  day 
in  a  department  store  where  she  lunched  and  un¬ 
fortunately  made  some  dubious  acquaintances;  in  the 
afternoon  she  established  herself  in  a  theater  and  sat 
contentedly  hour  after  hour,  watching  the  endless 
s  vaudeville  until  the  usual  time  for  returning  home.  At 
the  end  of  each  week  she  gave  her  parents  her  usual 
wage,  but  when  her  thirty  dollars  was  exhausted  it 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


325 

seemed  unendurable  that  she  should  return  to  the 
monotony  of  the  factory.  In  the  light  of  her  newly 
acquired  experience  she  had  learned  that  possibility 
which  the  city  ever  holds  open  to  the  restless  girl. 

That  more  such  girls  do  not  come  to  grief  is  due  to 
those  mothers  who  understand  the  insatiable  demand 
for  a  good  time,  and  if  all  of  the  mothers  did  under¬ 
stand,  those  pathetic  statistics  which  show  that  four 
fifths  of  all  prostitutes  are  under  twenty  years  of  age 
would  be  marvelously  changed.  We  are  told  that  “the 
will  to  live”  is  aroused  in  each  baby  by  his  mother’s  ir¬ 
resistible  desire  to  play  with  him,  the  physiological 
value  of  joy  that  a  child  is  born,  and  that  the  high 
death  rate  in  institutions  is  increased  by  “the  discon¬ 
tented  babies”  whom  no  one  persuades  into  living. 
Something  of  the  same  sort  is  necessary  in  that  second 
birth  at  adolescence.  The  young  people  need  affection 
and  understanding,  each  one  for  himself,  if  they  are  to 
be  induced  to  live  in  an  inheritance  of  decorum  and 
safety  and  to  understand  the  foundations  upon  which 
this  orderly  world  rests.  No  one  comprehends  their 
needs  so  sympathetically  as  those  mothers  who  iron  the 
flimsy  starched  finery  of  their  grown-up  daughters  late 
into  the  night,  and  who  pay  for  a  red  velvet  parlor  set 
on  the  installment  plan,  although  the  younger  children 
may  sadly  need  new  shoes.  These  mothers  apparently 
understand  the  sharp  demand  for  social  pleasure  and 
do  their  best  to  respond  to  it,  although  at  the  same 


326  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

time  they  constantly  minister  to  all  the  physical  needs 
of  an  exigent  family  of  little  children.  We  often  come 
to  a  realization  of  the  truth  of  Walt  Whitman’s  state¬ 
ment,  that  one  of  the  surest  sources  of  wisdom  is  the 
5  mother  of  a  large  family. 

It  is  but  natural,  perhaps,  that  the  members  of  the 
Hull-House  Woman’s  Club,  whose  prosperity  has  given 
them  some  leisure  and  a  chance  to  remove  their  own 
families  to  neighborhoods  less  full  of  temptations, 
o  should  have  offered  their  assistance  in  our  attempt  to 
provide  recreation  for  these  restless  young  people.  In 
many  instances  their  experience  in  the  club  itself  has 
enabled  them  to  perceive  these  needs.  One  day  a 
Juvenile  Court  officer  told  me  that  a  woman’s  club 
5  member,  who  has  a  large  family  of  her  own  and  one 
boy  sufficiently  difficult,  had  undertaken  to  care  for  a 
ward  of  the  Juvenile  Court  who  lived  only  a  block  from 
her  house,  and  that  she  had  kept  him  in  the  path  of 
rectitude  for  six  months.  In  reply  to  my  congratula¬ 
te  tions  upon  this  successful  bit  of  reform  to  the  club 
woman  herself,  she  said  that  she  was  quite  ashamed 
that  she  had  not  undertaken  the  task  earlier  for  she  had 
for  years  known  the  boy’s  mother,  who  scrubbed  a  down¬ 
town  office  building,  leaving  home  every  evening  at 
5  five  and  returning  at  eleven  during  the  very  time  the 
boy  could  most  easily  find  opportunities  for  wrong¬ 
doing.  She  said  that  her  obligation  toward  this  boy 
had  not  occurred  to  her  until  one  day  when  the  club 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


327 


members  were  making  pillowcases  for  the  Detention 
Home  of  the  Juvenile  Court,  it  suddenly  seemed  per¬ 
fectly  obvious  that  her  share  in  the  salvation  of  way¬ 
ward  children  was  to  care  for  this  particular  boy  and 
she  had  asked  the  Juvenile  Court  officer  to  commit  him 
to  her.  She  invited  the  boy  to  her  house  to  supper  every 
day  that  she  might  know  just  where  he  was  at  the 
crucial  moment  of  twilight,  and  she  adroitly  managed 
to  keep  him  under  her  own  roof  for  the  evening  if  she 
did  not  approve  of  the  plans  he  had  made.  She  con¬ 
cluded  with  the  remark  that  it  was  queer  that  the  sight 
of  the  boy  himself  hadn’t  appealed  to  her  but  that  the 
suggestion  had  come  to  her  in  such  a  roundabout  way. 

She  was,  of  course,  reflecting  upon  a  common  trait  in 
human  nature  —  that  we  much  more  easily  see  the 
duty  at  hand  when  we  see  it  in  relation  to  the  social 
duty  of  which  it  is  a  part.  When  she  knew  that  an  effort 
was  being  made  throughout  all  the  large  cities  in  the 
United  States  to  reclaim  the  wayward  boy,',  to  provide 
him  with  reasonable  amusement,  to  give  him  his  chance 
for  growth  and  development,  and  when  she  became 
ready  to  take  her  share  in  that  movement,  she  suddenly 
saw  the  concrete  case  which  she  had  not  recognized 
before. 

We  are  slowly  learning  that  social  advance  depends 
quite  as  much  upon  an  increase  in  moral  sensibility  as 
it  does  upon  a  sense  of  duty,  and  of  this  one  could  cite 
many  illustrations.  I  was  at  one  time  chairman  of  the 


328  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Child  Labor  Committee  in  the  General  Federation  of 
Woman’s  Clubs,  which  sent  out  a  schedule  asking  each 
club  in  the  United  States  to  report  as  nearly  as  possible 
all  the  working  children  under  fourteen  living  in  its 
5  vicinity.  A  Florida  club  filled  out  the  schedule  with  an 
astonishing  number  of  Cuban  children  who  were  at 
work  in  sugar  mills,  and  the  club  members  registered  a 
complaint  that  our  committee  had  sent  the  schedule  too 
late,  for  if  they  had  realized  the  conditions  earlier,  they 
i  o  might  have  presented  a  bill  to  the  legislature  which  had 
now  adjourned.  Of  course  the  children  had  been  work¬ 
ing  in  the  sugar  mills  for  years,  and  had  probably  gone 
back  and  forth  under  the  very  eyes  of  the  club  women, 
but  the  women  had  never  seen  them,  much  less  felt  any 

1  s  obligation  to  protect  them,  until  they  joined  a  club, 

and  the  club  joined  a  Federation,  and  the  Federation 
appointed  a  Child  Labor  Committee  who  sent  them  a 
schedule.  With  their  quickened  perceptions  they  then 
saw  the  rescue  of  these  familiar  children  in  the  light  of 
20  a  social  obligation.  Through  some  such  experiences  the 
members  of  the  Hull-LIouse  Women’s  Club  have  ob¬ 
tained  the  power  of  seeing  the  concrete  through  the 
general  and  have  entered  into  various  undertakings. 

Very  early  in  its  history  the  club  formed  what  was 

2  5  called  “A  Social  Extension  Committee.”  Once  a 

month  this  committee  gives  parties  to  people  in  the 
neighborhood  who  for  any  reason  seem  forlorn  and 
without  much  social  pleasure.  One  evening  they  in- 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


329 


vited  only  Italian  women,  thereby  crossing  a  distinct 
social  “gulf,”  for  there  certainly  exists  as  great  a  sense 
of  social  difference  between  the  prosperous  Irish- 
American  women  and  the  South-Italian  peasants  as 
between  any  two  sets  of  people  in  the  city  of  Chicago.  5 
The  Italian  women,  who  were  almost  eastern  in  their 
habits,  all  stayed  at  home  and  sent  their  husbands,  and 
the  social  extension  committee  entered  the  drawing¬ 
room  to  find  it  occupied  by  rows  of  Italian  working¬ 
men,  who  seemed  to  prefer  to  sit  in  chairs  along  the  wall.  1  o 
They  were  quite  ready  to  be  “socially  extended,”  but 
plainly  puzzled  as  to  what  it  was  all  about.  The  even¬ 
ing  finally  developed  into  a  very  successful  party,  not 
so  much  because  the  committee  were  equal  to  it,  as 
because  the  Italian  men  rose  to  the  occasion.  is 

Untiring  pairs  of  them  danced  the  tarantella;  they 
sang  Neapolitan  songs;  one  of  them  performed  some  of 
those  wonderful  sleight-of-hand  tricks  so  often  seen  on 
the  streets  of  Naples;  they  explained  the  coral  finger  of 
St.  Januarius  which  they  wore;  they  politely  ate  the  20 
strange  American  refreshments;  and  when  the  evening 
was  over,  one  of  the  committee  said  to  me,  “  Do  you 
know  I  am  ashamed  of  the  way  I  have  always  talked 
about  ‘dagos’;  they  are  quite  like  other  people,  only 
one  must  take  a  little  more  pains  with  them.  I  have  25 
been  nagging  my  husband  to  move  off  M  Street  because 
they  are  moving  in,  but  I  am  going  to  try  staying 
awhile  and  see  if  I  can  make  a  real  acquaintance  with 


330  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  EIULL-HOUSE 

some  of  them.”  To  my  mind  at  that  moment  the 
speaker  had  passed  from  the  region  of  the  uncultivated 
person  into  the  possibilities  of  the  cultivated  person. 
The  former  is  bounded  by  a  narrow  outlook  on  life, 
s  unable  to  overcome  differences  of  dress  and  habit,  and 
his  interests  are  slowly  contracting  within  a  circum¬ 
scribed  area;  while  the  latter  constantly  tends  to  be 
more  a  citizen  of  the  world  because  of  his  growing 
understanding  of  all  kinds  of  people  with  their  varying 
o  experiences.  We  send  our  young  people  to  Europe  that 
they  may  lose  their  provincialism  and  be  able  to  judge 
their  fellows  by  a  more  universal  test,  as  we  send  them 
to  college  that  they  may  attain  the  cultural  background 
and  a  larger  outlook;  all  of  these  it  is  possible  to  acquire 
5  in  other  ways,  as  this  member  of  the  woman’s  club  had 
discovered  for  herself. 

This  social  extension  committee  under  the  leadership 
of  an  ex-president  of  the  Club,  a  Hull-House  resident 
with  a  wide  acquaintance,  also  discover  many  of  those 
o  lonely  people  of  which  every  city  contains  so  large  a 
number.  We  are  only  slowly  apprehending  the  very 
real  danger  to  the  individual  who  fails  to  establish  some 
sort  of  genuine  relation  with  the  people  who  surround 
him.  We  are  all  more  or  less  familiar  with  the  results 
5  of  isolation  in  rural  districts;  the  Bronte  sisters0  have 
portrayed  the  hideous  immorality  and  savagery  of  the 
remote  dwellers  on  the  bleak  moorlands  of  northern 
England;  Miss  Wilkins  has  written  of  the  overdeveloped 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


33i 


will  of  the  solitary  New  Englander;  but  tales  still  wait 
to  be  told  of  the  isolated  city  dweller.  In  addition  to 
the  lonely  young  man  recently  come  to  town,  and 
the  country  family  who  have  not  yet  made  their  con¬ 
nections,  are  many  other  people  who,  because  of  5 
temperament  or  from  an  estimate  of  themselves  which 
will  not  permit  them  to  make  friends  with  the  “people 
around  here,  ”  or  who,  because  they  are  victims  to  a 
combination  of  circumstances,  lead  a  life  as  lonely  and 
untouched  by  the  city  about  them  as  if  they  were  in  1.0 
remote  country  districts.  The  very  fact  that  it  requires 
an  effort  to  preserve  isolation  from  the  tenement-house 
life  which  flows  all  about  them,  makes  the  character 
stiffer  and  harsher  than  mere  country  solitude  could  do. 

Many  instances  of  this  come  into  my  mind:  the  1 5 
faded,  ladylike  hairdresser,  who  came  and  went  to  her 
work  for  twenty  years,  carefully  concealing  her  dwelling 
place  from  the  “other  people  in  the  shop,”  moving 
whenever  they  seemed  too  curious  about  it,  and  priding 
herself  that  no  neighbor  had  ever  “stepped  inside  her  20 
door,”  and  yet  when  discovered  through  an  asthma 
which  forced  her  to  crave  friendly  offices,  she  was  most 
responsive  and  even  gay  in  a  social  atmosphere.  An¬ 
other  woman  made  a  long  effort  to  conceal  the  poverty 
resulting  from  her  husband’s  inveterate  gambling  and  25 
to  secure  for  her  children  the  educational  advantages  to 
which  her  family  had  always  been  accustomed.  Her 
five  children,  who  are  now  university  graduates,  do  not 


332  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

realize  how  hard  and  solitary  was  her  early  married  life 
when  we  first  knew  her,  and  she  was  beginning  to  regret 
the  isolation  in  which  her  children  were  being  reared, 
for  she  saw  that  their  lack  of  early  companionship 
5  would  always  cripple  their  power  to  make  friends.  She 
was  glad  to  avail  herself  of  the  social  resources  of  Hull- 
House  for  them,  and  at  last  even  for  herself. 

The  leader  of  the  social  extension  committee  has 
also  been  able,  through  her  connection  with  the  vacant 
olot  garden  movement  in  Chicago,  to  maintain  a  most 
flourishing  “ friendly  club”  largely  composed  of  people 
who  cultivate  these  garden  plots.  During  the  club 
evening  at  least,  they  regain  something  of  the  ease  of 
the  man  who  is  being  estimated  by  the  bushels  per  acre 
5  of  potatoes  he  has  raised,  and  not  by  that  flimsy  city 
judgment  so  often  based  upon  store  clothes.  Their 
jollity  and  enthusiasm  are  unbounded,  expressing  itself 
in  clog  dances  and  rousing  old  songs,  often  in  sharp  con¬ 
trast  to  the  overworked,  worn  aspects  of  the  members, 
o  Of  course  there  are  surprising  possibilities  discovered 
through  other  clubs,  in  one  of  Greek  women  or  in  the 
“circolo  Italiano,  ”  for  a  social  club  often  affords  a 
sheltered  space  in  which  the  gentler  social  usages  may 
be  exercised,  as  the  more  vigorous  clubs  afford  a  point 
s  of  departure  into  larger  social  concerns. 

The  experiences  of  the  Hull-House  Woman’s  Club 
constantly  react  upon  the  family  life  of  the  members. 
Their  husbands  come  with  them  to  the  annual  mid- 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


333 


winter  reception,  to  club  concerts  and  entertainments; 
the  little  children  come  to  the  May  party,  with  its 
dancing  and  games;  the  older  children,  to  the  day  in 
June  when  prizes  are  given  to  those  sons  and  daughters 
of  the  members  who  present  a  good  school  record  as 
graduates  either  from  the  eighth  grade  or  from  a  high 
school. 

It  seemed,  therefore,  but  a  fit  recognition  of  their 
efforts  when  the  president  of  the  club  erected  a  building 
planned  especially  for  their  needs,  with  their  own 
library  and  a  hall  large  enough  for  their  various  social 
undertakings,  although  of  course  Bowen  Hall  is  con¬ 
stantly  put  to  many  other  uses. 

It  was  under  the  leadership  of  this  same  able  presi¬ 
dent  that  the  club  achieved  its  wider  purposes  and  took 
its  place  with  the  other  forces  for  city  betterment.  The 
club  had  begun,  as  nearly  all  women’s  clubs  do,  upon 
the  basis  of  self-improvement,  although  the  foundations 
for  this  later  development  had  been  laid  by  one  of  their 
earliest  presidents,  who  was  the  first  probation  officer 
of  the  Juvenile  Court,  and  who  had  so  shared  her  ex¬ 
periences  with  the  club  that  each  member  felt  the  truth 
as  well  as  the  pathos  of  the  lines  inscribed  on  her 
memorial  tablet  erected  in  their  club  library: — 

“As  more  exposed  to  suffering  and  distress0 
Thence  also  more  alive  to  tenderness.” 

Each  woman  had  discovered  opportunities  in  her 


334  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

own  experience  for  this  same  tender  understanding, 
and  under  its  succeeding  president,  Mrs.  Pelham,  in 
its  determination  to  be  of  use  to  the  needy  and  dis¬ 
tressed,  the  club  developed  many  philanthropic  under- 
5  takings  from  the  humble  beginnings  of  a  linen  chest 
kept  constantly  filled  with  clothing  for  the  sick  and  poor. 
It  required,  however,  an  adequate  knowledge  of  ad¬ 
verse  city  conditions  so  productive  of  juvenile  delin¬ 
quency  and  a  sympathy  which  could  enkindle  itself  in 
omany  others  of  divers  faiths  and  training,  to  arouse  the 
club  to  its  finest  public  spirit.  This  was  done  by  a  later 
president,  Mrs.  Bowen,0  who,  as  head  of  the  Juvenile 
Protective  Association,  had  learned  that  the  moralized 
energy  of  a  group  is  best  fitted  to  cope  with  the  com- 
s  plicated  problems  of  a  city;  but  it  required  ability  of 
an  unusual  order  to  evoke  a  sense  of  social  obligation 
from  the  very  knowledge  of  adverse  city  conditions 
which  the  club  members  possessed,  and  to  connect  it 
with  the  many  civic  and  philanthropic  organizations  of 
othe  city  in  such  wise  as  to  make  it  socially  useful.  This 
financial  and  representative  connection  with  outside 
organizations  is  valuable  to  the  club  only  as  it  expresses 
its  sympathy  and  kindliness  at  the  same  time  in  con¬ 
crete  form.  A  group  of  members  who  lunch  with  Mrs. 
s  Bowen  each  week  at  Hull-House  discuss,  not  only 
topics  of  public  interest,  sometimes  with  experts  whom 
they  have  long  known  through  their  mutual  under- 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


335 

takings,  but  also  their  own  club  affairs  in  the  light  of 
this  larger  knowledge. 

Thus  the  value  of  social  clubs  broadens  out  in  one’s 
mind  to  an  instrument  of  companionship  through  which 
many  may  be  led  from  a  sense  of  isolation  to  one  of 
civic  responsibility,  even  as  another  type  of  club  pro¬ 
vides  recreational  facilities  for  those  who  have  had  only 
meaningless  excitements,  or  as  a  third  type  opehs  new 
and  interesting  vistas  of  life  to  those  who  are  ambitious. 

The  entire  organization  of  the  social  life  at  Hull- 
House,  while  it  has  been  fostered  and  directed  by 
residents  and  others,  has  been  largely  pushed  and 
vitalized  from  within  by  the  club  members  themselves. 
Sir  Walter  Besant  once  told  me  that  Hull-House  stood 
in  his  mind  more  nearly  for  the  ideal  of  the  “  Palace  of 
Delight”0  than  did  the  “London  People’s  Palace”  be¬ 
cause  we  had  depended  upon  the  social  resources  of  the 
people  using  it.  He  begged  me  not  to  allow  Hull-House 
to  become  too  educational.  He  believed  it  much  easier 
to  develop  a  polytechnic  institute  than  a  large  recrea¬ 
tional  center,  but  he  doubted  whether  the  former  was 
as  useful. 

The  social  clubs  form  a  basis  of  acquaintanceship  for 
many  people  living  in  other  parts  of  the  city.  Through 
friendly  relations  with  individuals,  which  is  perhaps 
the  sanest  method  of  approach,  they  are  thus  brought 
into  contact,  many  of  them  for  the  first  time,  with  the 


336  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

industrial  and  social  problems  challenging  the  moral 
resources  of  our  contemporary  life.  During  our  twenty 
years  hundreds  of  these  non-residents  have  directed 
clubs  and  classes,  and  have  increased  the  number  of 
5  Chicago  citizens  who  are  conversant  with  adverse  social 
conditions  and  conscious  that  only  by  the  unceasing 
devotion  of  each,  according  to  his  strength,  shall  the 
compulsions  and  hardships,  the  stupidities  and  cruelties 
of  life  be  overcome.  The  number  of  people  thus  in- 
io  formed  is  constantly  increasing  in  all  our  American 
cities,  and  they  may  in  time  remove  the  reproach  of 
social  neglect  and  indifference  which  has  so  long  rested 
upon  the  citizens  of  the  new  world.  I  recall  the  ex¬ 
perience  of  an  Englishman  who,  not  only  because  he  was 
i  s  a  member  of  the  Queen’s  Cabinet  and  bore  a  title,  but 
also  because  he  was  an  able  statesman,  was  entertained 
with  great  enthusiasm  by  the  leading  citizens  of  Chicago. 
At  a  large  dinner  party  he  asked  the  lady  sitting  next 
to  him  what  our  tenement-house  legislation  was  in 
20  regard  to  the  cubic  feet  of  air  required  for  each  occupant 
of  a  tenement  bedroom;  upon  her  disclaiming  any 
knowledge  of  the  subject,  the  inquiry  was  put  to  all  the 
diners  at  the  long  table,  all  of  whom  showed  surprise 
that  they  should  be  expected  to  possess  this  information. 
2 sin  telling  me  the  incident  afterward,  the  English  guest 
said  that  such  indifference  could  not  have  been  found 
among  the  leading  citizens  of  London,  whose  public 
spirit  had  been  aroused  to  provide  such  housing  con- 


VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS 


337 


ditions  as  should  protect  tenement  dwellers  at  least 
from  wanton  loss  of  vitality  and  lowered  industrial 
efficiency.  When  I  met  the  same  Englishman  in 
London  five  years  afterwards,  he  immediately  asked  me 
whether  Chicago  citizens  were  still  so  indifferent  to  the  5 
conditions  of  the  poor  that  they  took  no  interest  in  their 
proper  housing.  I  was  quick  with  that  defense  which 
an  American  is  obliged  to  use  so  often  in  Europe,  that 
our  very  democracy  so  long  presupposed  that  each 
citizen  could  care  for  himself  that  we  are  slow  to  develop  1 0 
a  sense  of  social  obligation.  He  smiled  at  the  familiar 
phrases  and  was  still  inclined  to  attribute  our  indiffer¬ 
ence  to  sheer  ignorance  of  social  conditions. 

The  entire  social  development  of  Hull-House  is  so 
unlike  what  I  predicted  twenty  years  ago,  that  I  venture  1 5 
to  quote  from  that  ancient  writing  as  an  end  to  this 
chapter. 

The  social  organism  has  broken  down  through  large  districts  of  our 
great  cities.  Many  of  the  people  living  there  are  very  poor,  the 
majority  of  them  without  leisure  or  energy  for  anything  but  the  gain  20 
of  subsistence. 

They  live  for  the  moment  side  by  side,  many  of  them  without 
knowledge  of  each  other,  without  fellowship,  without  local  tradition 
or  public  spirit,  without  social  organization  of  any  kind.  Practically 
nothing  is  done  to  remedy  this.  The  people  who  might  do  it,  who  2  5 
have  the  social  tact  and  training,  the  large  houses,  and  the  traditions 
and  customs  of  hospitality,  live  in  other  parts  of  the  city.  The  club 
houses,  libraries,  galleries,  and  semi-public  conveniences  for  social  life 
are  also  blocks  away.  We  find  workingmen  organized  into  armies  of 


33§  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

producers  because  men  of  executive  ability  and  business  sagacity  have 
found  it  to  their  interests  thus  to  organize  them.  But  these  working 
men  are  not  organized  socially;  although  lodging  in  crowded  tenement 
houses,  they  are  living  without  a  corresponding  social  contact.  The 
s  chaos  is  as  great  as  it  would  be  were  they  working  in  huge  factories 
without  foreman  or  superintendent.  Their  ideas  and  resources  are 
cramped,  and  the  desire  for  higher  social  pleasure  becomes  extinct. 
1  hey  have  no  share  in  the  traditions  and  social  energy  which  make  for 
progress.  Too  often  their  only  place  of  meeting  is  a  saloon,  their  only 
o  host  a  bartender;  a  local  demagogue  forms  their  public  opinion.  Men 
of  ability  and  refinement,  of  social  power  and  university  cultivation, 
stay  away  from  them.  Personally,  I  believe  the  men  who  lose  most 
are  those  who  thus  stay  away.  But  the  paradox  is  here:  when 
cultivated  people  do  stay  away  from  a  certain  portion  of  the  popula- 
5  tion,  when  all  social  advantages  are  persistently  withheld,  it  may  be 
for  years  the  result  itself  is  pointed  to  as  a  reason  and  is  used  as  an 
argument  for  the  continued  withholding. 

It  is  constantly  said  that  because  the  masses  have  never  had  social 
advantages,  they  do  not  want  them,  that  they  are  heavy  and  dull, 
o  and  that  it  will  take  political  or  philanthropic  machinery  to  change 
them.  This  divides  a  city  into  rich  and  poor;  into  the  favored,  who 
express  their  sense  of  the  social  obligation  by  gifts  of  money,  and  into 
the  unfavored,  who  express  it  by  clamoring  for  a  “share”  —  both  of 
them  actuated  by  a  vague  sense  of  justice.  This  division  of  the  city 
5  would  be  more  justifiable,  however,  if  the  people  who  thus  isolate 
themselves  on  certain  streets  and  use  their  social  ability  for  each 
other,  gained  enough  thereby  and  added  sufficient  to  the  sum  total  of 
social  progress  to  justify  the  withholding  of  the  pleasures  and  results 
of  that  progress  from  so  many  people  who  ought  to  have  them.  But 
o  they  cannot  accomplish  this  for  the  social  spirit  discharges  itself  in 
many  forms,  and  no  one  form  is  adequate  to  its  total  expression. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
Arts  at  Hull-House 


The  first  building  erected  for  Hull-House  contained 
an  art  gallery,  well  lighted  for  day  and  evening  use,  and 
our  first  exhibit  of  loaned  pictures  was  opened  in  June, 
1891,  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Barnett0  of  London.  It  is  al¬ 
ways  pleasant  to  associate  their  hearty  sympathy  with  5 
that  first  exhibit,  and  thus  to  connect  it  with  their 
pioneer  efforts  at  Toynbee  Hall  to  secure  for  working 
people  the  opportunity  to  know  the  best  art,  and  with 
their  establishment  of  the  first  permanent  art  gallery  in 
an  industrial  quarter.  10 

We  took  pride  in  the  fact  that  our  first  exhibit  con¬ 
tained  some  of  the  best  pictures  Chicago  afforded,  and 
we  conscientiously  insured  them  against  fire  and  care¬ 
fully  guarded  them  by  night  and  day. 

We  had  five  of  these  exhibits  during  two  years,  after  1 5 
the  gallery  was  completed:  two  of  oil  paintings,  one  of 
old  engravings  and  etchings,  one  of  water  colors,  and 
one  of  pictures  especially  selected  for  use  in  the  public 
schools.  These  exhibits  were  surprisingly  well  attended 
and  thousands  of  votes  were  cast  for  the  most  popular  20. 
pictures.  Their  value  to  the  neighborhood  of  course  had  U 
to  be  determined  by  each  one  of  us  according  to  the 


339 


34o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

value  he  attached  to  beauty  and  the  escape  it  offers 
from  dreary  reality  into  the  realm  of  the  imagination. 
Miss  Starr  always  insisted  that  the  arts  should  receive 
adequate  recognition  at  Hull-House  and  urged  that 
5  one  must  always  remember  “the  hungry  individual  soul 
which  without  art  will  have  passed  unsolaced  and  unfed, 
followed  by  other  souls  who  lack  the  impulse  his  should 
have  given.  ” 

The  exhibits  afforded  pathetic  evidence  that  the 
odder  immigrants  do  not  expect  the  solace  of  art  in  this 
country;  an  Italian  expressed  great  surprise  when  he 
found  that  we,  although  Americans,  still  liked  pictures, 
and  said  quite  naively  that  he  didn’t  know  that  Ameri¬ 
cans  cared  for  anything  but  dollars  —  that  looking  at 
5  pictures  was  something  people  only  did  in  Italy. 

The  extreme  isolation  of  the  Italian  colony  was  dem¬ 
onstrated  by  the  fact  that  he  did  not  know  that  there 
was  a  public  art  gallery  in  the  city  nor  any  houses  in 
which  pictures  were  regarded  as  treasures, 
o  A  Greek  was  much  surprised  to  see  a  photograph  of 
the  Acropolis  at  Hull-House  because  he  had  lived  in 
Chicago  for  thirteen  years  and  had  never  before  met 
any  Americans  who  knew  about  this  foremost  glory  of 
the  world.  Before  he  left  Greece  he  had  imagined  that 
5  Americans  would  be  most  eager  to  see  pictures  of 
Athens,  and  as  he  was  a  graduate  of  a  school  of  technol¬ 
ogy,  he  had  prepared  a  book  of  colored  drawings  and 
had  made  a  collection  of  photographs  which  he  was  sure 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


34i 


Americans  would  enjoy.  But  although  from  his  fruit 
stand  near  one  of  the  large  railroad  stations  he  had 
conversed  with  many  Americans  and  had  often  tried  to 
lead  the  conversation  back  to  ancient  Greece,  no  one 
had  responded,  and  he  had  at  last  concluded  that  “the 
people  of  Chicago  knew  nothing  of  ancient  times.” 

The  loan  exhibits  were  continued  until  the  Chicago 
Art  Institute  was  opened  free  to  the  public  on  Sunday 
afternoons  and  parties  were  arranged  at  Hull-House 
and  conducted  there  by  a  guide.  In  time  even  these 
parties  were  discontinued  as  the  galleries  became  better 
known  in  all  parts  of  the  city  and  the  Art  Institute 
management  did  much  to  make  pictures  popular. 

F rom  the  first  a  studio  was  maintained  at  Hull-House, 
which  has  developed  through  the  changing  years  under 
the  direction  of  Miss  Benedict,  one  of  the  residents  who 
is  a  member  of  the  faculty  in  the  Art  Institute.  Build¬ 
ings  on  the  Hull-House  quadrangle  furnish  studios  for 
artists  who  find  something  of  the  same  spirit  in  the  con¬ 
tiguous  Italian  colony  that  the  French  artist  is  tradi¬ 
tionally  supposed  to  discover  in  his  beloved  Latin 
Quarter.  These  artists  uncover  something  of  the 
picturesque  in  the  foreign  colonies,  which  they  have 
reproduced  in  painting,  etching,  and  lithography.  They 
find  their  classes  filled  not  only  by  young  people  pos¬ 
sessing  facility  and  sometimes  talent,  but  also  by  older 
people  to  whom  the  studio  affords  the  one  opportunity 
of  escape  from  dreariness:  a  widow  with  four  children, 


342  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

who  supplemented  a  very  inadequate  income  by  teach¬ 
ing  the  piano,  for  six  years  never  missed  her  weekly 
painting  lesson  because  it  was  “ her  one  pleasure”;  an¬ 
other  woman,  whose  youth  and  strength  had  gone  into 
5  the  care  of  an  invalid  father,  poured  into  her  afternoon 
in  the  studio  once  a  week,  all  of  the  longing  for  self- 
expression  which  she  habitually  suppressed. 

Perhaps  the  most  satisfactory  results  of  the  studio 
have  been  obtained  through  the  classes  of  young  men 
owho  are  engaged  in  the  commercial  arts,  and  who  are 
glad  to  have  an  opportunity  to  work  out  their  own 
ideas.  This  is  true  of  young  engravers  and  lithographers; 
of  the  men  who  have  to  do  with  posters  and  illustrations 
in  various  ways.  The  little  pile  of  stones  and  the  litho- 
5  grapher’s  handpress  in  a  corner  of  the  studio  have  been 
used  in  many  an  experiment,  as  has  a  set  of  beautiful 
type  logned  to  Hull-House  by  a  bibliophile. 

The  work  of  the  studio  almost  imperceptibly  merged 
into  the  crafts  and  well  within  the  first  decade  a  shop 
owas  opened  at  Hull-House  under  the  direction  of  several 
residents  who  were  also  members  of  the  Chicago  Arts 
and  Crafts  Society.  This  shop  is  not  merely  a  school 
where  people  are  taught  and  then  sent  forth  to  use  their 
teaching  in  art  according  to  their  individual  initiative 
s  and  opportunity,  but  where  those  who  have  already 
been  carefully  trained  may  express  the  best  they  can 
in  wood  or  metal.  T  he  Settlement  soon  discovers  how 
difficult  it  is  to  put  a  fringe  of  art  on  the  end  of  a  day 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


343 


spent  in  a  factory.  We  constantly  see  young  people 
doing  overhurried  work.  Wrapping  bars  of  soap  in 
pieces  of  paper  might  at  least  give  the  pleasure  of  ac¬ 
curacy  and  repetition  if  it  could  be  done  at  a  normal 
pace,  but  when  paid  for  by  the  piece,  speed  becomes  the 
sole  requirement  and  the  last  suggestion  of  human 
interest  is  taken  away.  In  contrast  to  this  the  Hull- 
House  shop  affords  many  examples  of  the  restorative 
power  in  the  exercise  of  a  genuine  craft.  A  young 
Russian  who,  like  too  many  of  his  countrymen,  had 
made  a  desperate  effort  to  fit  himself  for  a  learned  pro¬ 
fession,  and  who  had  almost  finished  his  course  in  a 
night  law  school,  used  to  watch  constantly  the  work 
being  done  in  the  metal  shop  at  Hull-House.  One  even¬ 
ing  in  a  moment  of  sudden  resolve,  he  took  off  his  coat, 
sat  down  at  one  of  the  benches,  and  began  to  work, 
obviously  as  a  very  clever  silversmith.  He  had  long 
concealed  his  craft  because  he  thought  it  would  hurt  his 
efforts  as  a  lawyer  and  because  he  imagined  an  office 
more  honorable  and  “more  American”  than  a  shop. 
As  he  worked  on  during  his  two  leisure  evenings  each 
week,  his  entire  bearing  and  conversation  registered  the 
relief  of  one  who  abandons  the  effort  he  is  not  fitted  for 
and  becomes  a  man  on  his  own  feet,  expressing  himself 
through  a  familiar  and  delicate  technique. 

Miss  Starr  at  length  found  herself  quite  impatient 
with  her  role  of  lecturer  on  the  arts,  while  all  the  handi¬ 
craft  about  her  was  untouched  by  beauty  and  did  not 


344  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

even  reflect  the  interest  of  the  workman.  She  took  a 
training  in  bookbinding  in  London  under  Mr.  Cobden- 
Sanderson  and  established  her  bindery  at  Hull-House 
in  which  design  and  workmanship,  beauty  and  thor- 
s  oughness  are  taught  to  a  small  number  of  apprentices. 

From  the  very  first  winter,  concerts  which  are  still 
continued  were  given  every  Sunday  afternoon  in  the 
Hull-House  drawing-room  and  later,  as  the  audiences 
increased,  in  the  larger  halls.  For  these  we  are  indebted 
oto  musicians  from  every  part  of  the  city.  Mr.  William 
Tomlins  early  trained  large  choruses  of  adults  as  his 
assistants  did  of  children,  and  the  response  to  all  of 
these  showed  that  while  the  number  of  people  in  our 
vicinity  caring  for  the  best  music  was  not  large,  they 
5  constituted  a  steady  and  appreciative  group.  It  was  in 
connection  with  these  first  choruses  that  a  public- 
spirited  citizen  of  Chicago  offered  a  prize  for  the  best 
labor  song,  competition  to  be  open  to  the  entire  country. 
The  responses  to  the  offer  literally  filled  three  large 
o  barrels  and  speaking  at  least  for  myself  as  one  of  the 
bewildered  judges,  we  were  more  disheartened  by  their 
quality  than  even  by  their  overwhelming  bulk.  Ap¬ 
parently  the  workers  of  America  are  not  yet  ready  to 
sing,  although  I  recall  a  creditable  chorus  trained  at 
s  Hull-House  for  a  large  meeting  in  sympathy  with  the 
anthracite  coal  strike  in  which  the  swinging  lines 

“Who  was  it  made  the  coal? 

Our  God  as  well  as  theirs” 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


345 

seemed  to  relieve  the  tension  of  the  moment.  Miss 
Eleanor  Smith,  the  head  of  the  Hull-House  Music 
School,  who  had  put  the  words  to  music,  performed  the 
same  office  for  the  “  Sweatshop”  of  the  Yiddish  poet,° 
the  translation  of  which  presents  so  graphically  the  5 
bewilderment  and  tedium  of  the  New  York  shop  that 
it  might  be  applied  to  almost  any  other  machine  in¬ 
dustry  as  the  first  verse  indicates: — 

“The  roaring  of  the  wheels  has  filled  my  ears, 

The  clashing  and  the  clamor  shut  me  in,  1  o 

Myself,  my  soul,  in  chaos  disappears, 

I  cannot  think  or  feel  amid  the  din.” 


It  may  be  that  this  plaint  explains  the  lack  of  labor 
songs  in  this  period  of  industrial  maladjustment  when 
the  worker  is  overmastered  by  his  very  tools.  In  addi-  1 5 
tion  to  sharing  with  our  neighborhood  the  best  music 
we  could  procure,  we  have  conscientiously  provided 
careful  musical  instruction  that  at  least  a  few  young 
people  might  understand  those  old  usages  of  art;  that 
they  might  master  its  trade  secrets,  for  after  all  it  is  20 
only  through  a  careful  technique  that  artistic  ability 
can  express  itself  and  be  preserved. 

From  the  beginning  we  had  classes  in  music,  and  the 
Hull-House  Music  School,  which  is  housed  in  quarters 
of  its  own  in  our  quieter  court,  was  opened  in  1893.  The  2 : 
school  is  designed  to  give  a  thorough  musical  instruction 
to  a  limited  number  of  children.  From  the  first  lessons 


346  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

they  are  taught  to  compose  and  to  reduce  to  order  the 
musical  suggestions  which  may  come  to  them,  and  in 
this  wise  the  school  has  sometimes  been  able  to  recover 
the  songs  of  the  immigrants  through  their  children. 
5  Some  of  these  folk  songs  have  never  been  committed  to 
paper,  but  have  survived  through  the  centuries  because 
of  a  touch  of  undying  poetry  which  the  world  has  always 
cherished;  as  in  the  song  of  a  Russian  who  is  digging  a 
post  hole  and  finds  his  task  dull  and  difficult  until  he 
o  strikes  a  stratum  of  red  sand,  which,  in  addition  to 
making  digging  easy,  reminds  him  of  the  red  hair  of  his 
sweetheart,  and  all  goes  merrily  as  the  song  lifts  into  a 
joyous  melody.  I  recall  again  the  almost  hilarious  en¬ 
joyment  of  the  adult  audience  to  whom  it  was  sung  by 
s  the  children  who  had  revived  it,  as  well  as  the  more 
sober  appreciation  of  the  hymns  taken  from  the  lips  of 
the  cantor,  whose  father  before  him  had  officiated  in 
the  synagogue. 

The  recitals  and  concerts  given  by  the  school  are 
o  attended  by  large  and  appreciative  audiences.  On  the 
Sunday  before  Christmas  the  program  of  Christmas 
songs  draws  together  people  of  the  most  diverging 
faiths.  In  the  deep  tones  of  the  memorial  organ  erected 
at  Hull-House,  we  realize  that  music  is  perhaps  the 
s  most  potent  agent  for  making  the  universal  appeal  and 
inducing  men  to  forget  their  differences. 

Some  of  the  pupils  in  the  music  school  have  developed 
during  the  years  into  trained  musicians  and  are  sup- 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


347 


porting  themselves  in  their  chosen  profession.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  constantly  see  the  most  promising 
musical  ability  extinguished  when  the  young  people 
enter  industries  which  so  sap  their  vitality  that  they 
cannot  carry  on  serious  study  in  the  scanty  hours  out¬ 
side  of  factory  work.  Many  cases  indisputably  illustrate 
this:  a  Bohemian  girl,  who,  in  order  to  earn  money  for 
pressing  family  needs,  first  ruined  her  voice  in  a  six 
months’  constant  vaudeville  engagement,  returned  to 
her  trade,  working  overtime  in  a  vain  effort  to  continue 
the  vaudeville  income;  another  young  girl  whom  Hull- 
House  had  sent  to  the  high  school  so  long  as  her  parents 
consented,  because  we  realized  that  a  beautiful  voice  is 
often  unavailable  through  lack  of  the  informing  mind, 
later  extinguished  her  promise  in  a  tobacco  factory;  a 
third  girl,  who  had  supported  her  little  sisters  since  she 
was  fourteen,  eagerly  used  her  fine  voice  for  earning 
money  at  entertainments  held  late  after  her  day’s  work, 
until  exposure  and  fatigue  ruined  her  health  as  well  as 
a  musician’s  future;  a  young  man  whose  music-loving 
family  gave  him  every  possible  opportunity,  and  who 
produced  some  charming  and  even  joyous  songs  during 
the  long  struggle  with  tuberculosis  which  preceded  his 
death,  had  made  a  brave  beginning,  not  only  as  a  teach¬ 
er  of  music  but  as  a  composer.  In  the  little  service  held 
at  Hull-House  in  his  memory,  when  the  children  sang 
his  composition,  “  How  Sweet  is  the  Shepherd’s  Sweet 
Lot,”  it  was  hard  to  realize  that  such  an  interpretive 


348  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

pastoral  could  have  been  produced  by  one  whose  child¬ 
hood  had  been  passed  in  a  crowded  city  quarter. 

Even  that  bitter  experience  did  not  prepare  us  for 
the  sorrowful  year  when  six  promising  pupils  out  of  a 
5  class  of  fifteen  developed  tuberculosis.  It  required  but 
little  penetration  to  see  that  during  the  eight  years  the 
class  of  fifteen  school  children  had  come  together  to  the 
music  school,  they  had  approximately  an  even  chance, 
but  as  soon  as  they  reached  the  legal  working  age  only 
o  a  scanty  moiety  of  those  who  became  self-supporting 
could  endure  the  strain  of  long  hours  and  bad  air.  Thus 
the  average  human  youth,  “With  all  the  sweetness  of 
the  common  dawn,”  is  flung  into  the  vortex  of  in¬ 
dustrial  life  wherein  the  everyday  tragedy  escapes  us 
5  save  when  one  of  them  becomes  conspicuously  un¬ 
fortunate.  Twice  in  one  year  we  were  compelled 

“To  find  the  inheritance  of  this  poor  child 
His  little  kingdom  of  a  forced  grave.” 

It  has  been  pointed  out  many  times  that  Art  lives  by 
o  devouring  her  own  offspring  and  the  world  has  come  to 
justify  even  that  sacrifice,  but  we  are  unfortified  and 
unsolaced  when  we  see  the  children  of  Art  devoured, 
not  by  her,  but  by  the  uncouth  stranger,  Modern  In¬ 
dustry,  who,  needlessly  ruthless  and  brutal  to  her  own 
5  children,  is  quickly  fatal  to  the  offspring  of  the  gentler 
mother.  And  so  schools  in  art  for  those  who  go  to  work 
at  the  age  when  more  fortunate  young  people  are  still 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


349 


sheltered  and  educated,  constantly  epitomize  one  of  the 
haunting  problems  of  life:  why  do  we  permit  the  waste 
of  this  most  precious  human  faculty,  this  consummate 
possession  of  civilization?  When  we  fail  to  provide  the 
vessel  in  which  it  may  be  treasured,  it  runs  out  upon  5 
the  ground  and  is  irretrievably  lost. 

The  universal  desire  for  the  portrayal  of  life  lying 
quite  outside  of  personal  experience  evinces  itself  in 
many  forms.  One  of  the  conspicuous  features  of  our 
neighborhood,  as  of  all  industrial  quarters,  is  the  per-  1 
sistency  with  which  the  entire  population  attends  the 
theater.  The  very  first  day  I  saw  Halsted  Street,  a  long 
line  of  young  men  and  boys  stood  outside  the  gallery 
entrance  of  the  Bijou  Theater,  waiting  for  the  Sunday 
matinee  to  begin  at  two  o’clock,  although  it  was  only  1 
high  noon.  This  waiting  crowd  might  have  been  seen 
every  Sunday  afternoon  during  the  twenty  years  which 
have  elapsed  since  then.  Our  first  Sunday  evening  in 
Hull-House,  when  a  group  of  small  boys  sat  on  our 
piazza  and  told  us  “about  things  around  here,”  their  2 
talk  was  all  of  the  theater  and  of  the  astonishing  things 
they  had  seen  that  afternoon. 

But  quite  as  it  was  difficult  to  discover  the  habits 
and  purposes  of  this  group  of  boys  because  they  much 
preferred  talking  about  the  theater  to  contemplating  2 
their  own  lives,  so  it  was  all  along  the  line;  the  young 
men  told  us  their  ambitions  in  the  phrases  of  stage 
heroes,  and  the  girls,  so  far  as  their  romantic  dreams 


350  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

could  be  shyly  put  into  words,  possessed  no  others  but 
those  soiled  by  long  use  in  the  melodrama.  All  of  these 
young  people  looked  upon  an  afternoon  a  week  in  the 
gallery  of  a  Halsted  Street  theater  as  their  one  op- 
s  portunity  to  see  life.  The  sort  of  melodrama  they  see 
there  has  recently  been  described  as  “the  ten  command¬ 
ments  written  in  red  fire.”  Certainly  the  villain  always 
comes  to  a  violent  end,  and  the  young  and  handsome 
hero  is  rewarded  by  marriage  with  a  beautiful  girl, 
o  usually  the  daughter  of  a  millionaire,  but  after  all  that 
is  not  a  portrayal  of  the  morality  of  the  ten  command¬ 
ments  any  more  than  of  life  itself. 

Nevertheless  the  theater,  such  as  it  was,  appeared  to 
be  the  one  agency  which  freed  the  boys  and  girls  from 
5  that  destructive  isolation  of  those  who  drag  themselves 
up  to  maturity  by  themselves,  and  it  gave  them  a 
glimpse  of  that  order  and  beauty  into  which  even  the 
poorest  drama  endeavors  to  restore  the  bewildering 
facts  of  life.  The  most  prosaic  young  people  bear 
o  testimony  to  this  overmastering  desire.  A  striking 
illustration  of  this  came  to  us  during  our  second  year’s 
residence  on  Halsted  Street  through  an  incident  in  the 
Italian  colony,  where  the  men  have  always  boasted  that 
they  were  able  to  guard  their  daughters  from  the  dan- 
sgers  of  city  life,  and  until  evil  Italians  entered  the  busi¬ 
ness  of  the  “white  slave  traffic,”  their  boast  was  well 
founded.  The  first  Italian  girl  to  go  astray  known  to 
the  residents  of  Hull-House,  was  so  fascinated  by  the 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


35i 


stage  that  on  her  way  home  from  work  she  always 
loitered  outside  a  theater  before  the  enticing  posters. 
Three  months  after  her  elopement  with  an  actor,  her 
distracted  mother  received  a  picture  of  her  dressed  in 
the  men’s  clothes  in  which  she  appeared  in  vaudeville.  5 
Her  family  mourned  her  as  dead  and  her  name  was 
never  mentioned  among  them  nor  in  the  entire  colony. 

In  further  illustration  of  an  overmastering  desire  to  see 
life  as  portrayed  on  the  stage  are  two  young  girls  whose 
sober  parents  did  not  approve  of  the  theater  and  would  10 
allow  no  money  for  such  foolish  purposes.  In  sheer 
desperation  the  sisters  evolved  a  plot  that  one  of  them 
would  feign  a  toothache,  and  while  she  was  having  her 
tooth  pulled  by  a  neighboring  dentist  the  other  would 
steal  the  gold  crowns  from  his  table,  and  with  the  money  1 5 
thus  procured  they  could  attend  the  vaudeville  theater 
every  night  on  their  way  home  from  work.  Apparently 
the  pain  and  wrongdoing  did  not  weigh  for  a  moment 
against  the  anticipated  pleasure.  The  plan  was  carried 
out  to  the  point  of  selling  the  gold  crowns  to  a  pawn-  20 
broker  when  the  disappointed  girls  were  arrested. 

All  this  effort  to  see  the  play  took  place  in  the  years 
before  the  five-cent  theaters  had  become  a  feature  of 
every  crowded  city  thoroughfare  and  before  their 
popularity  had  induced  the  attendance  of  two  and  a  25 
quarter  million  people  in  the  United  States  every 
twenty-four  hours.  The  eagerness  of  the  penniless 
children  to  get  into  these  magic  spaces  is  responsible  for 


352  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

an  entire  crop  of  petty  crimes  made  more  easy  because 
two  children  are  admitted  for  one  nickel  at  the  last  per¬ 
formance  when  the  hour  is  late  and  the  theater  nearly 
deserted.  The  Hull-House  residents  were  aghast  at  the 
s  early  popularity  of  these  mimic  shows,  and  in  the  days 
before  the  inspection  of  films  and  the  present  regulations 
for  the  five-cent  theaters,  we  established  at  Hull-House 
a  moving  picture  show.  Although  its  success  justified 
its  existence,  it  was  so  obviously  but  one  in  the  midst  of 

1  o  hundreds  that  it  seemed  much  more  advisable  to  turn 

our  attention  to  the  improvement  of  all  of  them,  or 
rather  to  assist  as  best  we  could  the  successful  efforts 
in  this  direction  by  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association. 

However,  long  before  the  five-cent  theater  was  even 
1 5  heard  of,  we  had  accumulated  much  testimony  as  to 
the  power  of  the  drama,  and  we  would  have  been  dull 
indeed  if  we  had  not  availed  ourselves  of  the  use  of  the 
play  at  Hull-House,  not  only  as  an  agent  of  recreation 
and  education,  but  as  a  vehicle  of  self-expression  for  the 
20  teeming  young  life  all  about  us. 

Long  before  the  Hull-House  theater  was  built  we 
had  many  plays,  first  in  the  drawing-room  and  later  in 
the  gymnasium.  The  young  people’s  clubs  never  tired 
of  rehearsing  and  preparing  for  these  dramatic  occasions, 

2  s  and  we  also  discovered  that  older  people  were  almost 

equally  ready  and  talented.  We  quickly  learned  that 
no  celebration  at  Thanksgiving  was  so  popular  as  a 
graphic  portrayal  on  the  stage  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers, 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


353 

and  we  were  often  put  to  it  to  reduce  to  dramatic 
effects  the  great  days  of  patriotism  and  religion. 

At  one  of  our  early  Christmas  celebrations  Long¬ 
fellow’s  ‘‘Golden  Legend”  was  given,  the  actors  por¬ 
traying  it  with  the  touch  of  the  miracle  play  spirit  which  5 
it  reflects.  I  remember  an  old  blind  man,  who  took  the 
part  of  a  shepherd,  said,  at  the  end  of  the  last  per¬ 
formance,  “Kind  Heart,”  a  name  by  which  he  always 
addressed  me,  “it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  been  waiting 
all  my  life  to  hear  some  of  these  things  said.  I  am  glad  10 
we  had  so  many  performances,  for  I  think  I  can  re¬ 
member  them  to  the  end.  It  is  getting  hard  for  me  to 
listen  to  reading,  but  the  different  voices  and  all  made 
this  very  plain.  ”  Had  he  not  perhaps  made  a  legitimate 
demand  upon  the  drama,  that  it  shall  express  for  us  i5 
that  which  we  have  not  been  able  to  formulate  for  our¬ 
selves,  that  it  shall  warm  us  with  a  sense  of  com¬ 
panionship  with  the  experiences  of  others;  does  not 
every  genuine  drama  present  our  relations  to  each  other 
and  to  the  world  in  which  we  find  ourselves  in  such  wise  20 
as  may  fortify  us  to  the  end  of  the  journey? 

The  immigrants  in  the  neighborhood  of  Hull-House 
have  utilized  our  little  stage  in  an  endeavor  to  reproduce 
the  past  of  their  own  nations  through  those  immortal 
dramas  which  have  escaped  from  the  restraining  bond  25 
of  one  country  into  the  land  of  the  universal. 

A  large  colony  of  Greeks  near  Hull-House,  who  often 
feel  that  their  history  and  classic  background  are  com- 


354  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

pletely  ignored  by  Americans,  and  that  they  are  easily 
confused  with  the  more  ignorant  immigrants  from  other 
parts  of  southeastern  Europe,  welcome  an  occasion  to 
present  Greek  plays  in  the  ancient  text.  With  expert 
s  help  in  the  difficulties  of  staging  and  rehearsing  a  classic 
play,  they  reproduced  the  “Ajax”  of  Sophocles0  upon  the 
Hull-House  stage.  It  was  a  genuine  triumph  to  the 
actors  who  felt  that  they  were  “showing  forth  the 
glory  of  Greece”  to  “ignorant  Americans.”  The 
o  scholar,  who  came  with  a  copy  of  Sophocles  in  hand  and 
followed  the  play  with  real  enjoyment,  did  not  in  the 
least  realize  that  the  revelation  of  the  love  of  Greek 
poets  was  mutual  between  the  audience  and  the  actors. 
The  Greeks  have  quite  recently  assisted  an  enthusiast 
5  in  producing  “Electra,  ”°  while  the  Lithuanians,  the 
Poles,  and  other  Russian  subjects  often  use  the  Hull- 
House  stage  to  present  plays  in  their  own  tongue,  which 
shall  at  one  and  the  same  time  keep  alive  their  sense  of 
participation  in  the  great  Russian  revolution  and  re- 
olieve  their  feelings  in  regard  to  it.  There  is  something 
still  more  appealing  in  the  yearning  efforts  the  immi¬ 
grants  sometimes  make  to  formulate  their  situation  in 
America.  I  recall  a  play  written  by  an  Italian  play¬ 
wright  of  our  neighborhood,  which  depicted  the  in- 
s  solent  break  between  Americanized  sons  and  old  coun¬ 
try  parents,  so  touchingly  that  it  moved  to  tears  all  the 
older  Italians  in  the  audience.  Did  the  tears  of  each 
express  relief  in  finding  that  others  had  had  the  same 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


355 


experience  as  himself,  and  did  the  knowledge  free  each 
one  from  a  sense  of  isolation  and  an  injured  belief  that 
his  children  were  the  worst  of  all? 

This  effort  to  understand  life  through  its  dramatic 
portrayal,  to  see  one’s  own  participation  intelligibly  set  s 
forth,  becomes  difficult  when  one  enters  the  field  of 
social  development,  but  even  here  it  is  not  impossible  if 
a  Settlement  group  is  constantly  searching  for  new 
material. 

A  labor  story  appearing  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  was  10^ 
kindly  dramatized  for  us  by  the  author,  who  also  super¬ 
intended  its  presentation  upon  the  Hull-House  stage. 

The  little  drama  presented  the  untutored  effort  of  a 
trades-union  man  to  secure  for  his  side  the  beauty  of  self- 
sacrifice,  the  glamour  of  martyrdom,  which  so  often  i  s 
seems  to  belong  solely  to  the  nonunion  forces.  The 
presentation  of  the  play  was  attended  by  an  audience 
of  trades-unionists  and  employers  and  those  other 
people  who  are  supposed  to  make  public  opinion.  To¬ 
gether  they  felt  the  moral  beauty  of  the  man’s  con-  2o 
elusion  that  “it’s  the  side  that  suffers  most  that  will 
win  out  in  this  war  —  the  saints  is  the  only  ones  that 
has  got  the  world  under  their  feet  —  we’ve  got  to  do 
the  way  they  done  if  the  unions  is  to  stand,”  so  com¬ 
pletely  that  it  seemed  quite  natural  that  he  should  25 
forfeit  his  life  upon  the  truth  of  this  statement. 

The  dramatic  arts  have  gradually  been  developed  at 
Hull-House  through  amateur  companies,  one  of  which 


>56  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

has  held  together  for  more  than  fifteen  years.  The 
members  were  originally  selected  from  the  young  people 
who  had  evinced  talent  in  the  plays  the  social  clubs 
were  always  giving,  but  the  association  now  adds  to 
s  itself  only  as  a  vacancy  occurs.  Some  of  them  have  de¬ 
veloped  almost  a  professional  ability,  although  con¬ 
trary  to  all  predictions  and  in  spite  of  several  offers, 
none  of  them  have  taken  to  a  stage  career.  They 
present  all  sorts  of  plays  from  melodrama  and  comedy 
oto  those  of  Shaw,  Ibsen,  and  Galsworthy.  The  latter 
are  surprisingly  popular,  perhaps  because  of  their  sin¬ 
cere  attempt  to  expose  the  shams  and  pretenses  of  con¬ 
temporary  life  and  to  penetrate  into  some  of  its  per¬ 
plexing  social  and  domestic  situations.  Through  such 
s  plays  the  stage  may  become  a  pioneer  teacher  of  social 
righteousness. 

I  have  come  to  believe,  however,  that  the  stage  may 
do  more  than  teach,  that  much  of  our  current  moral 
instruction  will  not  endure  the  test  of  being  cast  into  a 
o  lifelike  mold,  and  when  presented  in  dramatic  form  will 
reveal  itself  as  platitudinous  and  effete.  That  which 
may  have  sounded  like  righteous  teaching  when  it  was 
remote  and  wordy,  will  be  challenged  afresh  when  it  is 
obliged  to  simulate  life  itself. 

5  This  function  of  the  stage,  as  a  reconstructing  and 
reorganizing  agent  of  accepted  moral  truths,  came  to 
me  with  overwhelming  force  as  I  listened  to  the  Passion 
Play  at  Oberammergau0  one  beautiful  summer’s  day  in 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


357 

1900.  The  peasants  who  portrayed  exactly  the  suc¬ 
cessive  scenes  of  the  wonderful  Life,  who  used  only  the 
very  words  found  in  the  accepted  version  of  the  Gospels, 
yet  curiously  modernized  and  reorientated  the  message. 
They  made  clear  that  the  opposition  to  the  young  5 
Teacher  sprang  from  the  merchants  whose  traffic  in  the 
temple  He  had  disturbed  and  from  the  Pharisees  who 
were  dependent  upon  them  for  support.  Their  query 
was  curiously  familiar,  as  they  demanded  the  ante¬ 
cedents  of  the  Radical  who  dared  to  touch  vested  inter-  10 
ests,  who  presumed  to  dictate  the  morality  of  trade, 
and  who  insulted  the  marts  of  honest  merchants  by 
calling  them  “  a  den  of  thieves.  ”  As  the  play  developed, 
it  became  clear  that  this  powerful  opposition  had 
friends  in  Church  and  State,  that  they  controlled  in-  is 
fluences  which  ramified  in  all  directions.  They  obvious¬ 
ly  believed  in  their  statement  of  the  case  and  their  very 
wealth  and  position  in  the  community  gave  their  words 
such  weight  that  finally  all  of  their  hearers  were  con¬ 
vinced  that  the  young  Agitator  must  be  done  away  20 
with  in  order  that  the  highest  interests  of  society  might 
be  conserved.  These  simple  peasants  made  it  clear  that 
it  was  the  money  power  which  induced  one  of  the 
Agitator’s  closest  friends  to  betray,  him,  and  the  villain 
of  the  piece,  Judas  himself,  was  only  a  man  who  was  so  2  5 
dazzled  by  money,  so  under  the  domination  of  all  it 
represented,  that  he  was  perpetually  blind  to  the 
spiritual  vision  unrolling  before  him.  As  I  sat  through 


358  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  long  summer  day,  seeing  the  shadows  on  the  beauti¬ 
ful  mountain  back  of  the  open  stage  shift  from  one  side 
to  the  other  and  finally  grow  long  and  pointed  in  the 
soft  evening  light,  my  mind  was  filled  with  perplexing 
5  questions.  Did  the  dramatization  of  the  life  of  Jesus 
set  forth  its  meaning  more  clearly  and  conclusively 
than  talking  and  preaching  could  possibly  do  as  a 
shadowy  following  of  the  command  “to  do  the  will”? 

The  peasant  actors  whom  I  had  seen  returning  from 
omass  that  morning  had  prayed  only  to  portray  the  life 
as  He  had  lived  it  and,  behold,  out  of  their  simplicity 
and  piety  arose  this  modern  version  which  even  Harnack 
was  only  then  venturing  to  suggest  to  his  advanced 
colleagues  in  Berlin.  Yet  the  Oberammergau  folk  were 
5  very  like  thousands  of  immigrant  men  and  women  of 
Chicago,  both  in  their  experiences  and  in  their  familiari¬ 
ty  with  the  hard  facts  of  life,  and  throughout  that  day 
as  my  mind  dwelt  on  my  far-away  neighbors,  I  was  re¬ 
proached  with  the  sense  of  an  ungarnered  harvest, 
o  Of  course  such  a  generally  uplifted  state  comes  only 
at  rare  moments,  while  the  development  of  the  little 
theater  at  Hull-House  has  not  depended  upon  the 
moods  of  any  one,  but  upon  the  genuine  enthusiasm 
and  sustained  effort,  of  a  group  of  residents,  several  of 
5  them  artists  who  have  ungrudgingly  given  their  time 
to  it  year  after  year.  This  group  has  long  fostered 
junior  dramatic  associations,  through  which  it  seems 
possible  to  give  a  training  in  manners  and  morals  more 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


359 


directly  than  through  any  other  medium.  They  have 
learned  to  determine  very  cleverly  the  ages  at  which 
various  types  of  the  drama  are  most  congruous  and 
expressive  of  the  sentiments  of  the  little  troupes,  from 
the  fairy  plays,  such  as  “  Snow-White”  and  “  Puss-in- 
Boots,”  which  appeal  to  the  youngest  children,  to  the 
heroic  plays  of  “William  Tell,”  “King  John,”  and 
“Wat  Tyler”  for  the  older  lads,  and  to  the  romances 
and  comedies  which  set  forth  in  stately  fashion  the 
elaborated  life  which  so  many  young  people  admire.  A 
group  of  Jewish  boys  gave  a  dramatic  version  of  the 
story  of  Joseph  and  his  brethren  and  again  of  Queen 
Esther.  They  had  almost  a  sense  of  proprietorship  in 
the  fine  old  lines  and  were  pleased  to  bring  from  home 
bits  of  Talmudic  lore0  for  the  stage  setting.  The  same 
club  of  boys  at  one  time  will  buoyantly  give  a  roaring 
comedy  and  five  years  later  will  solemnly  demand  a 
drama  dealing  with  modern  industrial  conditions.  The 
Hull-House  theater  is  also  rented  from  time  to  time  to 
members  of  the  Young  People’s  Socialist  League,  who 
give  plays  both  in  Yiddish  and  English  which  reduce 
their  propaganda  to  conversation.  Through  such  hum¬ 
ble  experiments  as  the  Hull-House  stage,  as  well  as 
through  the  more  ambitious  reforms  which  are  at¬ 
tempted  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  the  theater 
may  at  last  be  restored  to  its  rightful  place  in  the  com¬ 
munity. 

There  have  been  times  when  our  little  stage  was  able 


36o  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

to  serve  the  theatre  lihre.  A  Chicago  troupe,  finding  it 
difficult  to  break  into  a  trust  theater,  used  it  one  winter 
twice  a  week  for  the  presentation  of  Ibsen0  and  old 
f  rench  comedy.  A  visit  from  the  Irish  poet  Yeats0  in- 
s  spired  us  to  do  our  share  toward  freeing  the  stage  from 
its  slavery  to  expensive  scene  setting,  and  a  forest  of 
stiff  conventional  trees  against  a  gilt  sky  still  remains 
with  us  as  a  reminder  of  an  attempt,  not  wholly  unsuc¬ 
cessful,  in  this  direction. 

o  This  group  of  Hull-House  artists  have  filled  our  little 
foyer  with  a  series  of  charming  playbills  and  by  dint  of 
painting  their  own  scenery  and  making  their  own 
costumes  have  obtained  beguiling  results  in  stage 
setting.  Sometimes  all  the  artistic  resources  of  the 
s  House  unite  in  a  Wagnerian  combination0;  thus  the 
text  of  the  “Troll’s  Holiday”  was  written  by  one 
resident,  set  to  music  by  another;  sung  by  the  Music 
School,  and  placed  upon  the  stage  under  the  careful 
direction  and  training  of  the  dramatic  committee;  and 
othe  little  brown  trolls  could  never  have  tumbled  about 
so  gracefully  in  their  gleaming  caves  unless  they  had 
been  taught  in  the  gymnasium. 

Some  such  synthesis  takes  place  every  year  at  the 
Hull-House  annual  exhibition,  when  an  effort  is  made 
s  to  bring  together  in  a  spirit  of  holiday  the  nine  thousand 
people  who  come  to  the  House  every  week  during  duller 
times.  Curiously  enough  the  central  feature  at  the 
annual  exhibition  seems  to  be  the  brass  band  of  the 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  361 

boys’  club  which  apparently  dominates  the  situation  by 
sheer  size  and  noise,  but  perhaps  their  fresh  boyish  en¬ 
thusiasm  expresses  that  which  the  older  people  take 
more  soberly. 

As  the  stage  of  our  little  theater  had  attempted  to  5 
portray  the  heroes  of  many  lands,  so  we  planned  one 
early  spring  seven  years  ago,  to  carry  out  a  scheme  of 
mural  decoration  upon  the  walls  of  the  theater  itself, 
which  should  portray  those  cosmopolitan  heroes  who 
have  become  great  through  identification  with  the  com-  1 
mon  lot,  in  preference  to  the  heroes  of  mere  achieve¬ 
ment.  In  addition  to  the  group  of  artists  living  at  Hull- 
Hou  se  several  others  were  in  temporary  residence,  and 
they  all  threw  themselves  enthusiastically  into  the 
plan.  The  series  began  with  Tolstoy  plowing  his  field,  1 
which  was  painted  by  an  artist  of  the  Glasgow  school, 
and  the  next  was  of  the  young  Lincoln  pushing  his  flat- 
boat  down  the  Mississippi  River  at  the  moment  he  re¬ 
ceived  his  first  impression  of  the  “ great  iniquity.” 
This  was  done  by  a  promising  young  artist  of  Chicago  2 
and  the  wall  spaces  nearest  to  the  two  selected  heroes 
were  quickly  filled  with  their  immortal  sayings. 

A  spirited  discussion  thereupon  ensued  in  regard  to 
the  heroes  for  the  two  remaining  large  wall  spaces, 
when  to  the  surprise  of  all  of  11s  the  group  of  twenty-  2 
five  residents  who  had  lived  in  unbroken  harmony  for 
more  than  ten  years,  suddenly  broke  up  into  cults  and 
even  camps  of  hero  worship.  Each  cult  exhibited  draw- 


362  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ings  of  its  own  hero  in  his  most  heroic  moment,  and  of 
course  each  drawing  received  enthusiastic  backing  from 
the  neighborhood,  each  according  to  the  nationality  of 
the  hero.  Thus  Phidias0  standing  high  on  his  scaffold 
5  as  he  finished  the  heroic  head  of  Athene;  the  young 
David0  dreamily  playing  his  harp  as  he  tended  his 
father’s  sheep  at  Bethlehem;  St.  Francis0  washing  the 
feet  of  the  leper;  the  young  slave  Patrick0  guiding  his 
master  through  the  bogs  of  Ireland,  which  he  later  rid 
oof  their  dangers;  the  poet  Hans  Sachs0  cobbling  shoes; 
Jeanne  d’Arc°  dropping  her  spindle  in  startled  wonder 
before  the  heavenly  visitants,  naturally  all  obtained 
such  enthusiastic  following  from  our  cosmopolitan 
neighborhood  that  it  was  certain  to  give  offense  if  any 
s  two  were  selected.  Then  there  was  the  cult  of  residents 
who  wished  to  keep  the  series  contemporaneous  with 
the  two  heroes  already  painted,  and  they  advocated 
William  Morris0  at  his  loom,  Walt  Whitman0  tramping 
the  open  road,  Pasteur0  in  his  laboratory,  or  Florence 
o  Nightingale0  seeking  the  wounded  on  the  field  of  battle. 
But  beyond  the  socialists,  few  of  the  neighbors  had 
heard  of  William  Morris,  and  the  fame  of  Walt  Whit¬ 
man  was  still  more  apocryphal;  Pasteur  was  con¬ 
sidered  merely  a  clever  scientist  without  the  romance 
s  which  evokes  popular  affection,  and  in  the  provisional 
drawing  submitted  for  votes,  gentle  Florence  Nightin¬ 
gale  was  said  “to  look  more  as  if  she  were  robbing  the 
dead  than  succoring  the  wounded.”  The  remark  shows 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


how  high  the  feeling  ran,  and  then,  as  something  must 
be  done  quickly,  we  tried  to  unite  upon  strictly  local 
heroes,  such  as  the  famous  fire  marshal  who  had  lived 
for  many  years  in  our  neighborhood  —  but  why  pro¬ 
long  this  description  which  demonstrates  once  more  5 
that  art,  if  not  always  the  handmaid  of  religion,  yet 
insists  upon  serving  those  deeper  sentiments  for  which 
we  unexpectedly  find  ourselves  ready  to  fight?  When 
we  were  all  fatigued  and  hopeless  of  compromise,  we 
took  refuge  in  a  series  of  landscapes  connected  with  our  10 
two  heroes  by  a  quotation  from  Wordsworth  slightly 
distorted  to  meet  our  dire  need,  but  still  stating  his  im¬ 
passioned  belief  in  the  efficacious  spirit  capable  of  com¬ 
panionship  with  man  which  resides  in  “particular 
spots.”  Certainly  peace  emanates  from  the  particular  15 
folding  of  the  hills  in  one  of  our  treasured  mural  land¬ 
scapes,  yet  occasionally  when  a  guest  with  a  bewildered 
air  looks  from  one  side  of  the  theater  to  the  other,  we 
are  forced  to  conclude  that  the  connection  is  not  con¬ 
vincing.  20 

In  spite  of  its  stormy  career  this  attempt  at  mural 
decoration  connects  itself  quite  naturally  with  the  spirit 
of  our  earlier  efforts  to  make  Hull-House  as  beautiful 
as  we  could,  which  had  in  it  a  desire  to  embody  in  the 
outward  aspect  of  the  House  something  of  the  rem-  2  5 
iniscence  and  aspiration  of  the  neighborhood  life. 

As  the  House  enlarged  for  new  needs  and  mellowed 
through  slow-growing  associations,  we  endeavored  to 


n 


364  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

fashion  it  from  without,  as  it  were,  as  well  as  from 
within.  A  tiny  wall  fountain  modeled  in  classic  pattern, 
for  us  penetrates  into  the  world  of  the  past,  but  for  the 
Italian  immigrant  it  may  defy  distance  and  barriers  as 
5  he  dimly  responds  to  that  typical  beauty  in  which  Italy 
has  ever  written  its  message,  even  as  classic  art  knew 
no  region  of  the  gods  which  was  not  also  sensuous,  and 
as  the  art  of  Dante0  mysteriously  blended  the  material 
and  the  spiritual. 

10  Perhaps  the  early  devotion  of  the  Hull-House  resi¬ 
dents  to  the  pre-Raphaelites0  recognized  that  they 
above  all  English  speaking  poets  and  painters  reveal 
“the  sense  of  the  expressiveness  of  outward  things” 
which  is  at  once  the  glory  and  the  limitation  of  the  arts. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Echoes  of  the  Russian  Revolution 

The  residents  of  Hull-House  have  always  seen  many 
evidences  of  the  Russian  Revolution;  a  forlorn  family 
of  little  children  whose  parents  have  been  massacred  at 
Kishinev0  are  received  and  supported  by  their  relatives 
in  our  Chicago  neighborhood;  or  a  Russian  woman,  her 
face  streaming  with  tears  of  indignation  and  pity,  asks 
you  to  look  at  the  scarred  back  of  her  sister,  a  young 
girl,  who  has  escaped  with  her  life  from  the  whips  of 
the  Cossack  soldiers;  or  a  studious  young  woman  sud¬ 
denly  disappears  from  the  Hull-House  classes  because 
she  has  returned  to  Kiev  to  be  near  her  brother  while 
he  is  in  prison,  that  she  may  earn  money  for  the  nour¬ 
ishing  food  which  alone  will  keep  him  from  contracting 
tuberculosis;  or  we  attend  a  protest  meeting  against  the 
newest  outrages  of  the  Russian  government  in  which 
the  speeches  are  interrupted  by  the  groans  of  those 
whose  sons  have  been  sacrificed  and  by  the  hisses  of 
others  who  cannot  repress  their  indignation.  At  such 
moments  an  American  is  acutely  conscious  of  our 
ignorance  of  this  greatest  tragedy  of  modern  times,  and 
at  our  indifference  to  the  waste  of  perhaps  the  noblest 
human  material  among  our  contemporaries.  Certain  it 

365 


366  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

is,  as  the  distinguished  Russian  revolutionists  have  come 
to  Chicago,  they  have  impressed  me,  as  no  one  else  ever 
has  done,  as  belonging  to  that  noble  company  of 
martyrs  who  have  ever  and  again  poured  forth  blood 
s  that  human  progress  might  be  advanced.  Sometimes 
these  men  and  women  have  addressed  audiences 
gathered  quite  outside  the  Russian  colony  and  have 
filled  to  overflowing  Chicago’s  largest  halls  with 
American  citizens,  deeply  touched  by  this  message  of 
o  martyrdom.  One  significant  meeting  was  addressed  by 
a  member  of  the  Russian  Duma0  and  bv  one  of  Russia’s 
oldest  and  sanest  revolutionists;  another  by  Madame 
Breshkovsky,0  who  later  languished  a  prisoner  in  the 
fortress  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul.0 
s  In  this  wonderful  procession  of  revolutionists,  Prince 
Kropotkin,0  or,  as  he  prefers  to  be  called,  Peter  Kropot¬ 
kin,  was  doubtless  the  most  distinguished.  When  he 
came  to  America  to  lecture,  he  was  heard  throughout 
the  country  with  great  interest  and  respect;  that  he  was 
o  a  guest  of  Hull-House  during  his  stay  in  Chicago  at¬ 
tracted  little  attention  at  the  time,  but  two  years  later, 
when  the  assassination  of  President  McKinley0  oc¬ 
curred,  the  visit  of  this  kindly  scholar,  who  had  alwa)^s 
called  himself  an  “anarchist”  and  had  certainly  written 
s  fiery  tracts  in  his  younger  manhood,  was  made  the  basis 
of  an  attack  upon  Hull-House  by  a  daily  newspaper, 
which  ignored  the  fact  that  while  Prince  Kropotkin 
had  addressed  the  Chicago  Arts  and  Crafts  Society  at 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  367 

Hull-House,  giving  a  digest  of  his  remarkable  book  on 
“Fields,  Factories,  and  Workshops,”  he  had  also 
spoken  at  the  State  Universities  of  Illinois  and  Wis¬ 
consin  and  before  the  leading  literary  and  scientific 
societies  of  Chicago.  These  institutions  and  societies 
were  not,  therefore,  called  anarchistic.  Hull-House  had 
doubtless  laid  itself  open  to  this  attack  through  an  in¬ 
cident  connected  with  the  imprisonment  of  the  editor 
of  an  anarchistic  paper,  who  was  arrested  in  Chicago 
immediately  after  the  assassination  of  President 
McKinley.  In  the  excitement  following  the  national 
calamity  and  the  avowal  by  the  assassin  of  the  influence 
of  the  anarchistic  lecture  to  which  he  had  listened,  ar¬ 
rests  were  made  in  Chicago  of  every  one  suspected  of 
anarchy,  in  the  belief  that  a  widespread  plot  would  be 
uncovered.  The  editor’s  house  was  searched  for  in¬ 
criminating  literature,  his  wife  and  daughter  taken  to  a 
police  station,  and  his  son  and  himself,  with  several 
other  suspected  anarchists,  were  placed  in  the  disused 
cells  in  the  basement  of  the  city  hall. 

It  is  impossible  to  overstate  the  public  excitement  of 
the  moment  ana  the  unfathomable  sense  of  horror  with 
which  the  community  regarded  an  attack  upon  the 
chief  executive  of  the  nation,  as  a  crime  against  govern¬ 
ment  itself  which  compels  an  instinctive  recoil  from  all 
law-abiding  citizens.  Doubtless  both  the  horror  and 
recoil  have  their  roots  deep  down  in  human  experience; 
the  earliest  forms  of  government  implied  a  group  which 


368  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

offered  competent  resistance  to  outsiders,  but  assuming 
no  protection  was  necessary  between  any  two  of  its 
own  members,  promptly  punished  with  death  the 
traitor  who  had  assaulted  any  one  within.  An  an- 
5  archistic  attack  against  an  official  thus  furnishes  an 
accredited  basis  both  for  unreasoning  hatred  and  for 
prompt  punishment.  Both  the  hatred  and  the  deter¬ 
mination  to  punish  reached  the  highest  pitch  in  Chicago 
after  the  assassination  of  President  McKinley,  and  the 
o  group  of  wretched  men  detained  in  the  old-fashioned, 
scarcely  habitable  cells,  had  not  the  least  idea  of  their 
ultimate  fate.  They  were  not  allowed  to  see  an  attorney 
and  were  kept  “in  communicado”  as  their  excited 
friends  called  it.  I  had  seen  the  editor  and  his  family 
5  only  during  Prince  Kropotkin’s  stay  at  Hull-House, 
when  they  had  come  to  visit  him  several  times.  The 
editor  had  impressed  me  as  a  quiet,  scholarly  man,  chal¬ 
lenging  the  social  order  by  the  philosophic  touchstone 
of  Bakunin0  and  of  Herbert  Spencer,  somewhat  startled 
o  by  the  radicalism  of  his  fiery  young  son  and  much  com¬ 
forted  by  the  German  domesticity  of  his  wife  and 
daughter.  Perhaps  it  was  but  my  hysterical  symptom 
of  the  universal  excitement,  but  it  certainly  seemed  to 
me  more  than  I  could  bear  when  a  group  of  his  in- 
5  dividualistic  friends,  who  had  come  to  ask  for  help, 
said:  “You  see  what  becomes  of  your  boasted  law;  the 
authorities  won’t  even  allow  an  attorney,  nor  will  they 
accept  bail  for  these  men,  against  whom  nothing  can 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  369 

be  proved,  although  the  veriest  criminals  are  not  denied 
such  a  right.”  Challenged  by  an  anarchist,  one  is  al¬ 
ways  sensitive  for  the  honor  of  legally  constituted 
society,  and  I  replied  that  of  course  the  men  could  have 
an  attorney,  that  the  assassin  himself  would  eventually 
be  furnished  with  one,  that  the  fact  that  a  man  was  an 
anarchist  had  nothing  to  do  with  his  rights  before  the 
law!  I  was  met  with  the  retort  that  that  might  do  for 
a  theory,  but  that  the  fact  still  remained  that  these  men 
had  been  absolutely  isolated,  seeing  no  one  but  police¬ 
men,  who  constantly  frightened  them  with  tales  of 
public  clamor  and  threatened  lynching. 

This  conversation  took  place  on  Saturday  night  and, 
as  the  final  police  authority  rests  in  the  mayor,  with  a 
friend  who  was  equally  disturbed  over  the  situation,  I 
repaired  to  his  house  on  Sunday  morning  to  appeal  to 
him  in  the  interest  of  a  law  and  order  that  should  not 
yield  to  panic.  We  contended  that  to  the  anarchist 
above  all  men  it  must  be  demonstrated  that  law  is  im¬ 
partial  and  stands  the  test  of  every  strain.  The  mayor 
heard  us  through  with  the  ready  sympathy  of  the 
successful  politician.  He  insisted,  however,  that  the 
men  thus  far  had  merely  been  properly  protected 
against  lynching,  but  that  it  might  now  be  safe  to  allow 
them  to  see  some  one;  he  would  not  yet,  however,  take 
the  responsibility  of  permitting  an  attorney,  but  if  I 
myself  chose  to  see  them  on  the  humanitarian  errand 
of  an  assurance  of  fair  play,  he  would  write  me  a  permit 


370  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

at  once.  I  promptly  fell  into  the  trap,  if  trap  it  was, 
and  within  half  an  hour  was  in  a  corridor  in  the  city  hall 
basement,  talking  to  the  distracted  editor  and  sur¬ 
rounded  by  a  cordon  of  police,  who  assured  me  that  it 
s  was  not  safe  to  permit  him  out  of  his  cell.  The  editor, 
who  had  grown  thin  and  haggard  under  his  suspense, 
asked  immediately  as  to  the  whereabouts  of  his  wife 
and  daughter,  concerning  whom  he  had  heard  not  a 
word  since  he  had  seen  them  arrested.  Gradually  he 
o  became  composed  as  he  learned,  not  that  his  testimony 
had  been  believed  to  the  effect  that  he  had  never  seen 
the  assassin  but  once,  and  had  then  considered  him  a 
foolish  half-witted  creature,  but  that  the  most  thorough¬ 
going  “dragnet”  investigations  on  the  part  of  the 
5  united  police  of  the  country  had  failed  to  discover  a 
plot  and  that  the  public  was  gradually  becoming  con¬ 
vinced  that  the  dastardly  act  was  that  of  a  solitary 
man  with  no  political  or  social  affiliations. 

The  entire  conversation  was  simple  and  did  not  seem 
oto  me  unlike,  in  motive  or  character,  interviews  I  had 
had  with  many  another  forlorn  man  who  had  fallen  into 
prison.  I  had  scarce  returned  to  Hull-House,  however, 
before  it  was  filled  with  reporters,  and  I  at  once  dis¬ 
covered  that  whether  or  not  I  had  helped  a  brother  out 
5  of  a  pit,  I  had  fallen  into  a  deep  one  myself.  A  period  of 
sharp  public  opprobrium  followed,  traces  of  which,  I 
suppose,  will  always  remain.  And  yet,  in  the  midst  of 
the  letters  of  protest  and  accusation  which  made  my 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  371 

mail  a  horror  every  morning,  came  a  few  letters  of  an¬ 
other  sort,  one  from  a  federal  judge  whom  I  had  never 
seen  and  another  from  a  distinguished  professor  in  con¬ 
stitutional  law,  who  congratulated  me  on  what  they 
termed  a  sane  attempt  to  uphold  the  law  in  time  of 
panic. 

Although  one  or  two  ardent  young  people  rushed  into 
print  to  defend  me  from  the  charge  of  “  abetting 
anarchy,5’  it  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  that  mere  words 
would  not  avail.  I  had  felt  that  the  protection  of  the 
law  itself,  extended  to  the  most  unpopular  citizen,  was 
the  only  reply  to  the  anarchistic  argument,  to  the  effect 
that  this  moment  of  panic  revealed  the  truth  of  their 
theory  of  government;  that  the  custodians  of  law  and 
order  have  become  the  government  itself  quite  as  the 
armed  men  hired  by  the  medieval  guilds  to  protect  them 
in  the  peaceful  pursuit  of  their  avocations,  through 
sheer  possession  of  arms  finally  made  themselves  rulers 
of  the  city.  At  that  moment  I  was  firmly  convinced 
that  the  public  could  only  be  convicted  of  the  blindness 
of  its  course,  when  a  body  of  people  with  a  hundred-fold 
of  the  moral  energy  possessed  by  a  Settlement  group, 
should  make  clear  that  there  is  no  method  by  which 
any  community  can  be  guarded  against  sporadic  efforts 
on  the  part  of  half-crazed,  discouraged  men,  save  by  a 
sense  of  mutual  rights  and  securities  which  will  include 
the  veriest  outcast. 

It  seemed  to  me  then  that  in  the  millions  of  words 


372  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

uttered  and  written  at  that  time,  no  one  adequately 
urged  that  public-spirited  citizens  set  themselves  the 
task  of  patiently  discovering  how  these  sporadic  acts  of 
violence  against  government  may  be  understood  and 
5  averted.  We  do  not  know  whether  they  occur  among 
the  discouraged  and  unassimilated  immigrants,  who 
might  be  cared  for  in  such  a  way  as  enormously  to  lessen 
the  probability  of  these  acts,  or  whether  they  are  the 
result  of  anarchistic  teaching.  By  hastily  concluding 
o  that  the  latter  is  the  sole  explanation  for  them,  we  make 
no  attempt  to  heal  and  cure  the  situation.  Failure  to 
make  a  proper  diagnosis  may  mean  treatment  of  a 
disease  which  does  not  exist,  or  it  may  furthermore 
mean  that  the  dire  malady  from  which  the  patient  is 
s  suffering  be  permitted  to  develop  unchecked.  And  yet 
as  the  details  of  the  meager  life  of  the  President’s  as¬ 
sassin  were  disclosed,  they  were  a  challenge  to  the  forces 
for  social  betterment  in  American  cities.  Was  it  not  an 
indictment  to  all  those  whose  business  it  is  to  interpret 
o  and  solace  the  wretched,  that  a  boy  should  have  grown 
up  in  an  American  city  so  uncared  for,  so  untouched  by 
higher  issues,  his  wounds  of  life  so  unhealed  by  religion 
that  the  first  talk  he  ever  heard  dealing  with  life’s 
wrongs,  although  anarchistic  and  violent,  should  yet 
5  appear  to  point  a  way  of  relief? 

The  conviction  that  a  sense  of  fellowship  is  the  only 
implement  which  will  break  into  the  locked  purpose  of 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  373 

a  half-crazed  creature  bent  upon  destruction  in  the 
name  of  justice,  came  to  me  through  an  experience  re¬ 
cited  to  me  at  this  time  by  an  old  anarchist. 

He  was  a  German  cobbler  who,  through  all  the  chang¬ 
es  in  the  manufacturing  of  shoes,  had  steadily  clung  to 
his  little  shop  on  a  Chicago  thoroughfare,  partly  as  an 
expression  of  his  individualism  and  partly  because  he 
preferred  bitter  poverty  in  a  place  of  his  own  to  good 
wages  under  a  disciplinary  foreman.  The  assassin  of 
President  McKinley,  on  his  way  through  Chicago  only 
a  few  days  before  he  committed  his  dastardly  deed,  had 
visited  all  the  anarchists  whom  he  could  find  in  the 
city,  asking  them  for  “the  password”  as  he  called  it. 
They,  of  course,  possessed  no  such  thing,  and  had 
turned  him  away,  some  with  disgust  and  all  with  a 
certain  degree  of  impatience,  as  a  type  of  the  ill- 
balanced  man  who,  as  they  put  it,  was  always  “hang¬ 
ing  around  the  movement,  without  the  slightest  con¬ 
ception  of  its  meaning.”  Among  other  people,  he 
visited  the  German  cobbler,  who  treated  him  much  as 
the  others  had  done,  but  who,  after  the  event  had  made 
clear  the  identity  of  his  visitor,  was  filled  with  the  most 
bitter  remorse  that  he  had  failed  to  utilize  his  chance 
meeting  with  the  assassin  to  deter  him  from  his  purpose. 
He  knew  as  well  as  any  psychologist  who  has  read  the 
history  of  such  solitary  men  that  the  only  possible  way 
to  break  down  such  a  persistent  and  secretive  purpose 


374  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

was  by  the  kindliness  which  might  have  induced  con¬ 
fession,  which  might  have  restored  the  future  assassin 
into  fellowship  with  normal  men. 

In  the  midst  of  his  remorse,  the  cobbler  told  me  a  tale 
5 of  his  own  youth;  that  years  before,  when  an  ardent 
young  fellow  in  Germany,  newly  converted  to  the 
philosophy  of  anarchism,  as  he  called  it,  he  had  made 
up  his  mind  that  the  Church,  as  much  as  the  State,  was 
responsible  for  human  oppression,  and  that  this  fact 
o could  best  be  set  forth  “in  the  deed”  by  the  public 
destruction  of  a  clergyman  or  priest;  that  he  had  carried 
firearms  for  a  year  with  this  purpose  in  mind,  but  that 
one  pleasant  summer  evening,  in  a  moment  of  weakness, 
he  had  confided  his  intention  to  a  friend,  and  that  from 
5  that  moment  he  not  only  lost  all  desire  to  carry  it  out, 
but  it  seemed  to  him  the  most  preposterous  thing 
imaginable.  In  concluding  the  story  he  said:  “That 
poor  fellow  sat  just  beside  me  on  my  bench;  if  I  had 
only  put  my  hand  on  his  shoulder  and  said,  ‘Now,  look 
ohere,  brother,  what  is  on  your  mind?  What  makes  you 
talk  such  nonsense?  Tell  me.  I  have  seen  much  of  life, 
and  understand  all  kinds  of  men.  I  have  been  young 
and  hot-headed  and  foolish  myself’;  if  lie  had  told  me  of 
his  purpose  then  and  there,  he  would  never  have  carried 
5  it  out.  The  whole  nation  would  have  been  spared  this 
horror.”  As  he  concluded  he  shook  his  gray  head  and 
sighed  as  if  the  whole  incident  were  more  than  he  could 
bear  —  one  of  those  terrible  sins  of  omission;  one  of  the 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  375 

things  he  “ought  to  have  done,”  the  memory  of  which 
is  so  hard  to  endure. 

The  attempt  a  Settlement  makes  to  interpret  Ameri¬ 
can  institutions  to  those  who  are  bewildered  concerning 
them,  either  because  of  their  personal  experiences  or 
because  of  preconceived  theories,  would  seem  to  lie  in 
the  direct  path  of  its  public  obligation,  and  yet  it  is 
apparently  impossible  for  the  overwrought  community 
to  distinguish  between  the  excitement  the  Settlements 
are  endeavoring  to  understand  and  to  allay  and  the 
attitude  of  the  Settlement  itself.  At  times  of  public 
panic,  fervid  denunciation  is  held  to  be  the  duty  of 
every  good  citizen,  and  if  a  Settlement  is  convinced  that 
the  incident  should  be  used  to  vindicate  the  law  and 
does  not  at  the  moment  give  its  strength  to  denuncia¬ 
tion,  its  attitude  is  at  once  taken  to  imply  a  champion¬ 
ship  of  anarchy  itself. 

The  public  mind  at  such  a  moment  falls  into  the  old 
medieval  confusion  —  he  who  feeds  or  shelters  a  heretic 
is  upon  prima  facie0  evidence  a  heretic  himself — he 
who  knows  intimately  people  among  whom  anarchists 
arise,  is  therefore  an  anarchist.  I  personally  am  con¬ 
vinced  that  anarchy  as  a  philosophy  is  dying  down,  not 
only  in  Chicago,  but  everywhere;  that  their  leading 
organs  have  discontinued  publication,  and  that  their 
most  eminent  men  in  America  have  deserted  them. 
Even  those  groups  which  have  continued  to  meet  are 
dividing,  and  the  major  half  in  almost  every  instance 


376  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

calls  itself  socialist-anarchists,  an  apparent  contra¬ 
diction  of  terms,  whose  members  insist  that  the  social¬ 
istic  organization  of  society  must  be  the  next  stage  of 
social  development  and  must  be  gone  through  with,  so 
s  to  speak,  before  the  ideal  state  of  society  can  be  reached, 
so  nearly  begging  the  question  that  some  orthodox 
socialists  are  willing  to  recognize  them.  It  is  certainly 
true  that  just  because  anarchy  questions  the  very 
foundations  of  society,  the  most  elemental  sense  of  pro- 
otection  demands  that  the  method  of  meeting  the  chal¬ 
lenge  should  be  intelligently  considered. 

Whether  or  not  Hull-House  has  accomplished  any¬ 
thing  by  its  method  of  meeting  such  a  situation,  or  at 
least  attempting  to  treat  it  in  a  way  which  will  not 
s  destroy  confidence  in  the  American  institutions  so 
adored  by  refugees  from  foreign  governmental  op¬ 
pression,  it  is  of  course  impossible  for  me  to  say. 

And  yet  it  was  in  connection  with  an  effort  to  pursue 
an  intelligent  policy  in  regard  to  a  so-called  “foreign 
o  anarchist”  that  Hull-House  again  became  associated 
with  that  creed  six  years  later.  This  again  was  an  echo 
of  the  Russian  revolution,  but  in  connection  with  one 
of  its  humblest  representatives.  A  young  Russian  Jew 
named  Averbuch  appeared  in  the  early  morning  at  the 
5  house  of  the  Chicago  chief  of  police  upon  an  obscure 
errand.  It  was  a  moment  of  panic  everywhere  in  regard 
to  anarchists  because  of  a  recent  murder  in  Denver 
which  had  been  charged  to  an  Italian  anarchist,  and 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  377 

the  chief  of  police,  assuming  that  the  dark  young  man 
standing  in  his  hallway  was  an  anarchist  bent  upon  his 
assassination,  hastily  called  for  help.  In  a  panic  born 
of  fear  and  self-defense,  young  Averbuch  was  shot  to 
death.  The  members  of  the  Russian-Jewish  colony  on  5 
the  west  side  of  Chicago  were  thrown  into  a  state  of  in¬ 
tense  excitement  as  soon  as  the  nationality  of  the  young 
man  became  known.  They  were  filled  with  dark  fore¬ 
bodings  from  a  swift  prescience  of  what  it  would  mean 
to  them  were  the  odium  of  anarchy  rightly  or  wrongly  1 
attached  to  one  of  their  members.  It  seemed  to  the 
residents  of  Hull-House  most  important  that  every 
effort  should  be  made  to  ascertain  just  what  did  happen, 
that  every  means  of  securing  information  should  be  ex¬ 
hausted  before  a  final  opinion  should  be  formed,  and  1 
this  odium  fastened  upon  a  colony  of  law-abiding 
citizens.  The  police  might  be  right  or  wrong  in  their  as¬ 
sertion  that  the  man  was  an  anarchist.  It  was,  to  our 
minds,  also  most  unfortunate  that  the  Chicago  police 
in  the  determination  to  uncover  an  anarchistic  plot  2 
should  have  utilized  the  most  drastic  methods  of  search 
within  the  Russian-Jewish  colony,  composed  of  families 
only  too  familiar  with  the  methods  of  the  Russian 
police.  Therefore,  when  the  Chicago  police  ransacked 
all  the  printing  offices  they  could  locate  in  the  colony,  2 
when  they  raided  a  restaurant  which  they  regarded  as 
suspicious  because  it  had  been  supplying  food  at  cost 
to  the  unemployed,  when  they  searched  through  private 


378  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

houses  for  papers  and  photographs  of  revolutionaries, 
when  they  seized  the  library  of  the  Edelstadt  group0  and 
carried  the  books,  including  Shakespeare  and  Herbert 
Spencer,  to  the  city  hall,  when  they  arrested  two  friends 
s  of  young  Averbuch  and  kept  them  in  the  police  station 
forty-eight  hours,  when  they  mercilessly  “ sweated”  the 
sister,  Olga,  that  she  might  be  startled  into  a  con¬ 
fession  —  all  these  things  so  poignantly  reminded  them 
of  Russian  methods,  that  indignation,  fed  both  by  old 
o  memory  and  bitter  disappointment  in  America,  swept 
over  the  entire  colony.  The  older  men  asked  whether 
constitutional  rights  gave  no  guarantee  against  such 
violent  aggression  of  police  power,  and  the  hot-headed 
younger  ones  cried  out  at  once  that  the  only  way  to  deal 
s  with  the  police  was  to  defy  them,  which  was  true  of 
police  the  world  over.  It  was  said  many  times  that 
those  who  are  without  influence  and  protection  in  a 
strange  country  fare  exactly  as  hard  as  do  the  poor  in 
Europe;  that  all  the  talk  of  guaranteed  protection 
o  through  political  institutions  is  nonsense. 

Every  Settlement  has  classes  in  citizenship  in  which 
the  principles  of  American  institutions  are  expounded 
and  of  these  the  community,  as  a  whole,  approves.  But 
the  Settlements  know  better  than  any  one  else  that 
s  while  these  classes  and  lectures  are  useful,  nothing  can 
possibly  give  lessons  in  citizenship  so  effectively  and 
make  so  clear  the  constitutional  basis  of  a  self-governing 
community  as  the  current  event  itself.  The  treatment 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  379 

at  a  given  moment  of  that  foreign  colony  which  feels 
itself  outraged  and  misunderstood,  either  makes  its 
constitutional  rights  clear  to  it,  or  forever  confuses  it 
on  the  subject. 

The  only  method  by  which  a  reasonable  and  loyal 
conception  of  government  may  be  substituted  for  the 
one  formed  upon  Russian  experiences,  is  that  the  actual 
experience  of  refugees  with  government  in  America 
shall  gradually  demonstrate  what  a  very  different  thing 
government  means  here.  Such  an  event  as  the  Aver¬ 
buch  affair  affords  an  unprecedented  opportunity  to 
make  clear  this  difference  and  to  demonstrate  beyond 
the  possibility  of  misunderstanding  that  the  guarantee 
of  constitutional  rights  implies  that  officialism  shall  be 
restrained  and  guarded  at  every  point,  that  the  official 
represents,  not  the  will  of  a  small  administrative  body, 
but  the  will  of  the  entire  people,  and  that  methods 
therefore  have  been  constituted  by  which  official  ag¬ 
gression  may  be  restrained.  The  Averbuch  incident 
gave  an  opportunity  to  demonstrate  this  to  that  very 
body  of  people  who  need  it  most:  to  those  who  have 
lived  in  Russia  where  autocratic  officers  represent 
autocratic  power  and  where  government  is  officialism. 
It  seemed  to  the  residents  in  the  Settlements  nearest 
the  Russian-Jewish  colony  that  it  was  an  obvious  piece 
of  public  spirit  to  try  out  all  the  legal  value  involved,  to 
insist  that  American  institutions  were  stout  enough  not 
to  break  down  in  times  of  stress  and  public  panic. 


38o  twenty  years  at  hull-house 

The  belief  of  many  Russians  that  the  Averbuch 
incident  would  be  made  a  prelude  to  the  constant  use 
of  the  extradition  treaty  for  the  sake  of  terrorizing 
revolutionists  both  at  home  and  abroad,  received  a 
5  certain  corroboration  when  an  attempt  was  made  in 
1908  to  extradite  a  Prussian  revolutionist  named  Rudo- 
vitz  who  was  living  in  Chicago.  The  first  hearing  before  a 
United  States  Commissioner  gave  a  verdict  favorable 
to  the  Russian  Government  although  this  was  after- 
o  wards  reversed  by  the  Department  of  State  in  Wash¬ 
ington.  Partly  to  educate  American  sentiment,  partly 
to  express  sympathy  with  the  Russian  refugees  in  their 
dire  need,  a  series  of  public  meetings  was  arranged  in 
which  the  operations  of  the  extradition  treaty  were 
s  discussed  by  many  of  us  who  had  spoken  at  a  meeting 
held  in  protest  against  its  ratification  fifteen  years  be¬ 
fore.  It  is  impossible  for  any  one  unacquainted  with 
the  Russian  colony  to  realize  the  consternation  pro¬ 
duced  by  this  attempted  extradition.  I  acted  as 
o  treasurer  of  the  fund  collected  to  defray  the  expenses 
of  halls  and  printing  in  the  campaign  against  the  policy 
of  extradition  and  had  many  opportunities  to  talk  with 
members  of  the  colony.  One  old  man,  tearing  his  hair 
and  beard  as  he  spoke,  declared  that  all  his  sons  and 
s  grandsons  might  thus  be  sent  back  to  Russia;  in  fact, 
all  of  the  younger  men  in  the  colony  might  be  extra¬ 
dited,  for  every  high-spirited  young  Russian  was,  in  a 
sense,  a  revolutionist. 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  381 

Would  it  not  provoke  to  ironic  laughter  that  very 
nemesis  which  presides  over  the  destinies  of  nations,  if 
the  most  autocratic  government  yet  remaining  in 
civilization  should  succeed  in  utilizing  for  its  own 
autocratic  methods  the  youngest  and  most  daring  ex¬ 
periment  in  democratic  government  which  the  world 
has  ever  seen?  Stranger  results  have  followed  a  course 
of  stupidity  and  injustice  resulting  from  blindness  and 
panic! 

It  is  certainly  true  that  if  the  decision  of  the  federal 
office  in  Chicago  had  not  been  reversed  by  the  depart¬ 
ment  of  state  in  Washington,  the  United  States  govern¬ 
ment  would  have  been  committed  to  return  thousands 
of  spirited  young  refugees  to  the  punishments  of  the 
Russian  autocracy. 

It  was  perhaps  significant  of  our  need  of  what 
Napoleon  called  a  “revival  of  civic  morals’5  that  the 
public  appeal  against  such  a  reversal  of  our  traditions 
had  to  be  based  largely  upon  the  contributions  to 
American  progress  made  from  other  revolutions:  the 
Puritans0  from  the  English,  Lafayette0  from  the 
French,  Carl  Schurz0  and  many  another  able  man  from 
the  German  upheavals  in  the  middle  of  the  century. 

A  distinguished  German  scholar,  writing  at  the  end 
of  his  long  life  a  description  of  his  friends  of  1848  who 
made  a  gallant  although  premature  effort  to  unite  the 
German  states  and  to  secure  a  constitutional  govern¬ 
ment,  thus  concludes:  “But  not  a  few  saw  the  whole 


382  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

of  their  lives  wrecked,  either  in  prison  or  poverty, 
though  they  had  done  no  wrong,  and  in  many  cases 
were  the  finest  characters  it  has  been  my  good  fortune 
to  know.  They  were  before  their  time;  the  fruit  was 
snot  ripe,  as  it  was  in  1871,  and  Germany  but  lost  her 
best  sons  in  those  miserable  years.”  When  the  time  is 
ripe  in  Russia*  when  she  finally  yields  to  those  great 
forces  which  are  molding  and  renovating  contemporary 
life,  when  her  Cavour  and  her  Bismarck0  finally  throw 
ointo  the  first  governmental  forms  all  that  yearning  for 
juster  human  relations  which  the  idealistic  Russian 
revolutionists  embody,  we  may  look  back  upon  these 
“miserable  years”  with  a  sense  of  chagrin  at  our  lack 
of  sympathy  and  understanding, 
s  Again  it  is  far  from  easy  to  comprehend  the  great 
Russian  struggle.  I  recall  a  visit  from  the  famous 
revolutionist  Gershuni,  who  had  escaped  from  Siberia 
in  a  barrel  of  cabbage  rolled  under  the  very  fortress  of 
the  commandant  himself,  had  made  his  way  through 
o  Manchuria  and  China  to  San  Francisco,  and  on  his  way 
back  to  Russia  had  stopped  in  Chicago  for  a  few  days. 
Three  months  later  we  heard  of  his  death,  and  whenever 
I  recall  the  conversation  held  with  him,  I  find  it  in¬ 
vested  with  that  dignity  which  last  words  imply.  Upon 
s  the  request  of  a  comrade  Gershuni  had  repeated  the 
substance  of  the  famous  speech  he  had  made  to  the 
court  which  sentenced  him  to  Siberia.  As  representing 
the  government  against  which  he  had  rebelled  he  told 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION %  383 

the  court  that  he  might  in  time  be  able  to  forgive  all  of 
their  outrages  and  injustices  save  one:  the  unforgivable 
outrage  would  remain  that  hundreds  of  men  like  him¬ 
self,  who  were  vegetarians  because  they  were  not  willing 
to  participate  in  the  destruction  of  living  creatures,  who 
had  never  struck  a  child  even  in  punishment,  who  were 
so  consumed  with  tenderness  for  the  outcast  and  op¬ 
pressed  that  they  had  lived  for  weeks  among  starving 
peasants  only  that  they  might  cheer  and  solace  them  — 
that  these  men  should  have  been  driven  into  terrorism, 
until  impelled  to  “execute,”  as  they  call  it  —  “assas¬ 
sinate”  the  Anglo-Saxon  would  term  it  —  public  offi¬ 
cials,  was  something  for  which  he  would  never  forgive 
the  Russian  government.  It  was,  perhaps,  the  heat  of 
the  argument,  as  much  as  conviction,  which  led  me  to 
reply  that  it  would  be  equally  difficult  for  society  to 
forgive  these  very  revolutionists  for  one  thing  they  had 
done,  their  institution  of  the  use  of  force  in  such  wise 
that  it  would  inevitably  be  imitated  by  men  of  less 
scruple  and  restraint;  that  to  have  revived  such  a 
method  in  civilization,  to  have  justified  it  by  their 
disinterestedness  of  purpose  and  nobility  of  character, 
was  perhaps  the  gravest  responsibility  that  any  group 
of  men  could  assume.  With  a  smile  of  indulgent  pity 
such  as  one  might  grant  to  a  mistaken  child,  he  replied 
that  such  Tolstoyan  principles  were  as  fitted  to  Russia 
as  “these  toilettes,”  pointing  to  the  thin  summer  gowns 
of  his  listeners,  “were  fitted  to  a  Siberian  winter.” 


384  , TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

And  yet  I  held  the  belief  then,  as  I  certainly  do  now, 
that  when  the  sense  of  justice  seeks  to  express  itself 
quite  outside  the  regular  channels  of  established  govern¬ 
ment,  it  has  set  forth  on  a  dangerous  journey  inevitably 
5  ending  in  disaster,  and  that  this  is  true  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  adventure  may  have  been  inspired  by 
noble  motives. 

Still  more  perplexing  than  the  use  of  force  by  the 
revolutionists  is  the  employment  of  the  agent-pro- 
ovocateur  on  the  part  of  the  Russian  government.  The 
visit  of  Vladimir  Bourtzeff0  to  Chicago  just  after  his 
exposure  of  the  famous  secret  agent,  AzefF,  filled  one 
with  perplexity  in  regard  to  a  government  which  would 
connive  at  the  violent  death  of  a  faithful  official  and 
s  that  of  a  member  of  the  royal  household  for  the  sake 
of  bringing  opprobrium  and  punishment  to  the  revolu¬ 
tionists  and  credit  to  the  secret  police. 

The  Settlement  has  also  suffered  through  its  effort 
to  secure  open  discussion  of  the  methods  of  the  Russian 
o  government.  During  the  excitement  connected  with 
the  visit  of  Gorki0  to  this  country,  three  different  com¬ 
mittees  came  to  Hull-House  begging  that  I  would 
secure  a  statement  in  at  least  one  of  the  Chicago 
dailies  of  their  own  view,  that  the  agents  of  the  Czar 
5  had  cleverly  centered  public  attention  upon  Gorki’s 
private  life  and  had  fomented  a  scandal  so  successfully 
that  the  object  of  Gorki’s  visit  to  America  had  been 
foiled;  he  who  had  known  intimately  the  most  wretched 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  385 

of  the  Czar’s  subjects,  who  was  best  able  to  sym¬ 
pathetically  portray  their  wretchedness,  not  only  failed 
to  get  a  hearing  before  an  American  audience,  but  could 
scarcely  find  the  shelter  of  a  roof.  I  told  two  of  the 
Russian  committees  that  it  was  hopeless  to  undertake 
any  explanation  of  the  bitter  attack  until  public  excite¬ 
ment  had  somewhat  subsided;  but  one  Sunday  after¬ 
noon  when  a  third  committee  arrived,  I  said  that  I 
would  endeavor  to  have  reprinted  in  a  Chicago  daily 
the  few  scattered  articles  written  for  the  magazines 
which  tried  to  explain  the  situation,  one  by  the  head 
professor  in  political  economy  of  a  leading  university, 
and  others  by  publicists  well  informed  as  to  Russian 
affairs. 

I  hoped  that  a  cosmopolitan  newspaper  might  feel 
an  obligation  to  recognize  the  desire  for  fair  play  on 
the  part  of  thousands  of  its  readers  among  the  Russians, 
Poles,  and  Finns,  at  least  to  the  extent  of  reproducing 
these  magazine  articles  under  a  noncommittal  caption. 
That  same  Sunday  evening  in  company  with  one  of  the 
residents,  I  visited  a  newspaper  office  only  to  hear  its 
representative  say  that  my  plan  was  quite  out  of  the 
question,  as  the  whole  subject  was  what  newspaper  men 
called  “a  sacred  cow.”  He  said,  however,  that  he 
would  willingly  print  an  article  which  I  myself  should 
write  and  sign.  I  declined  this  offer  with  the  statement 
that  one  who  had  my  opportunities  to  see  the  struggles 
of  poor  women  in  securing  support  for  their  children, 


386  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

found  it  impossible  to  write  anything  which  would 
however  remotely  justify  the  loosening  of  marriage 
bonds,  even  if  the  defense  of  Gorki  made  by  the  Russian 
committees  was  sound.  We  left  the  newspaper  office 
5  somewhat  discouraged  with  what  we  thought  one  more 
unsuccessful  effort  to  procure  a  hearing  for  the  immi¬ 
grants. 

I  had  considered  the  incident  closed,  when  to  my 
horror  and  surprise  several  months  afterwards  it  was 
omade  the  basis  of  a  story  with  every  possible  vicious 
interpretation.  One  of  the  Chicago  newspapers  had 
been  indicted  by  Mayor  Dunne  for  what  he  considered 
an  actionable  attack  upon  his  appointees  to  the  Chicago 
School  Board  of  whom  I  was  one,  and  the  incident,  en- 
5  larged  and  coarsened,  was  submitted  as  evidence  to  the 
Grand  Jury  in  regard  to  my  views  and  influence.  Al¬ 
though  the  evidence  was  thrown  out,  an  attempt  was 
again  made  to  revive  this  story  by  the  managers  of 
Mayor  Dunne’s  second  campaign,  this  time  to  show 
ohow  “the  protector  of  the  oppressed”  was  traduced. 
The  incident  is  related  here  as  an  example  of  the  clever 
use  of  that  old  device  which  throws  upon  the  radical  in 
religion,  in  education,  and  in  social  reform,  the  odium 
of  encouraging  “harlots  and  sinners”  and  of  defending 
5  their  doctrines. 

If  the  under  dog  were  always  right,  one  might  quite 
easily  try  to  defend  him.  The  trouble  is  that  very 
often  he  is  but  obscurely  right,  sometimes  only  partially 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  387 

right,  and  often  quite  wrong;  but  perhaps  he  is  never  so 
altogether  wrong  and  pig-headed  and  utterly  reprehen¬ 
sible  as  he  is  represented  to  be  by  those  who  add  the 
possession  of  prejudices  to  the  other  almost  insuperable 
difficulties  of  understanding  him.  It  was,  perhaps,  not  5 
surprising  that  with  these  excellent  opportunities  for 
misjudging  Hull-House,  we  should  have  suffered  attack 
from  time  to  time  whenever  any  untoward  event  gave 
an  opening,  as  when  an  Italian  immigrant  murdered  a 
priest  in  Denver,  Colorado.  Although  the  wretched  man  1  o 
had  never  been  in  Chicago,  much  less  at  Hull-House,  a 
Chicago  ecclesiastic  asserted  that  he  had  learned  hatred 
of  the  Church  as  a  member  of  the  Giordano  Bruno0 
Club,  an  Italian  Club,  one  of  whose  members  lived  at 
Hull-House,  and  which  had  occasionally  met  there,  al-  1 5 
though  it  had  long  maintained  clubrooms  of  its  own. 
This  club  had  its  origin  in  the  old  struggles  of  united 
Italy  against  the  temporal  power  of  the  Pope,  one  of  the 
European  echoes  with  which  Chicago  resounds.  The 
Italian  resident,  as  the  editor  of  a  paper  representing  20 
new  Italy,  had  come  in  sharp  conflict  with  the  Chicago 
ecclesiastic,  first  in  regard  to  naming  a  public  school  of 
the  vicinity  after  Garibaldi,  which  was  of  course  not 
tolerated  by  the  Church,  and  then  in  regard  to  many 
another  issue  arising  in  anticlericalism,  which,  although  2  5 
a  political  party,  is  constantly  involved,  from  the  very 
nature  of  the  case,  in  theological  difficulties.  The  con¬ 
test  had  been  carried  on  with  a  bitterness  impossible 


388  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

for  an  American  to  understand,  but  its  origin  and 
implications  were  so  obvious  that  it  did  not  occur  to 
any  of  us  that  it  could  be  associated  with  Hull-House 
either  in  its  motive  or  direction, 
s  The  ecclesiastic  himself  had  lived  for  years  in  Rome, 
and  as  I  had  often  discussed  the  problems  of  Italian 
politics  with  him,  I  was  quite  sure  he  understood  the 
raison  d’etre  for  the  Giordano  Bruno  Club.  Fortunately 
in  the  midst  of  the  rhetorical  attack,  our  friendly  re- 
olations  remained  unbroken  with  the  neighboring  priests 
from  whom  we  continued  to  receive  uniform  courtesy 
as  we  cooperated  in  cases  of  sorrow  and  need.  Hundreds 
of  devout  communicants  identified  with  the  various 
Hull-House  clubs  and  classes  were  deeply  distressed 
5  by  the  incident,  but  assured  us  it  was  all  a  misunder¬ 
standing.  Easter  came  soon  afterwards,  and  it  was  not 
difficult  to  make  a  connection  between  the  attack  and 
the  myriad  of  Easter  cards  which  filled  my  mail. 

Thus  a  Settlement  becomes  involved  in  the  many 
o  difficulties  of  its  neighbors  as  its  experiences  make  vivid 
the  consciousness  of  modern  internationalism.  And 
yet  the  very  fact  that  the  sense  of  reality  is  so  keen  and 
the  obligation  of  the  Settlement  so  obvious,  may  per¬ 
haps  in  itself  explain  the  opposition  LIull-House  has 
s  encountered  when  it  expressed  its  sympathy  with  the 
Russian  revolution.  We  were  much  entertained,  al¬ 
though  somewhat  ruefully,  when  a  Chicago  woman 
withdrew  from  us  a  large  annual  subscription  because 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION  389 

Hull-House  had  defended  a  Russian  refugee  while  she, 
who  had  seen  much  of  the  Russian  aristocracy  in 
Europe,  knew  from  them  that  all  the  revolutionary 
agitation  was  both  unreasonable  and  unnecessary! 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  say  whether  these  op-  5 
positions  were  inevitable  or  whether  they  were  indica¬ 
tions  that  Hull-House  had  somehow  bungled  at  its 
task.  Many  times  I  have  been  driven  to  the  confession 
of  the  blundering  Amiel°:  “It  requires  ability  to  make 
what  we  seem  agree  with  what  we  are.”  10 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

Socialized  Education 

In  a  paper  written  years  ago  I  deplored  at  some 
length  the  fact  that  educational  matters  are  more 
democratic  in  their  political  than  in  their  social  aspect, 
and  I  quote  the  following  extract  from  it  as  throwing 
5  some  light  upon  the  earlier  educational  undertakings 
at  Hull-House: — 

Teaching  in  a  Settlement  requires  distinct  methods,  for  it  is  true  of 
people  who  have  been  allowed  to  remain  undeveloped  and  whose 
faculties  are  inert  and  sterile,  that  they  cannot  take  their  learning 
i  o  heavily.  It  has  to  be  diffused  in  a  social  atmosphere,  information 
must  be  held  in  solution,  in  a  medium  of  fellowship  and  good  will. 

Intellectual  life  requires  for  its  expansion  and  manifestation  the 
influence  and  assimilation  of  the  interests  and  affections  of  others. 
Mazzini,  that  greatest  of  all  democrats,  who  broke  his  heart  over  the 

1  5  condition  of  the  South  European  peasantry,  said:  “Education  is  not 

merely  a  necessity  of  true  life  by  which  the  individual  renews  his 
vital  force  in  the  vital  force  of  humanity;  it  is  a  Holy  Communion 
with  generations  dead  and  living,  by  which  he  fecundates  all  his 
faculties.  When  he  is  withheld  from  this  Communion  for  generations, 

2  o  as  the  Italian  peasant  has  been,  we  say,  ‘He  is  like  a  beast  of  the 

field;  he  must  be  controlled  by  force.’ ”  Even  to  this  it  is  sometimes 
added  that  it  is  absurd  to  educate  him,  immoral  to  disturb  his  content. 
We  stupidly  use  the  effect  as  an  argument  for  a  continuance  of  the 
cause.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  a  Settlement  is  a  protest  against  a 
2  5  restricted  view  of  education. 


390 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


39i 


In  line  with  this  declaration,  Hull-House  in  the  very 
beginning  opened  what  we  called  College  Extension 
Classes  with  a  faculty  finally  numbering  thirty-five 
college  men  and  women,  many  of  whom  held  their 
pupils  for  consecutive  years.  As  these  classes  antedated 
in  Chicago  the  University  Extension  and  Normal  Ex¬ 
tension  classes  and  supplied  a  demand  for  stimulating 
instruction,  the  attendance  strained  to  their  utmost 
capacity  the  spacious  rooms  in  the  old  house.  The 
relation  of  students  and  faculty  to  each  other  and  to 
the  residents  was  that  of  guest  and  hostess  and  at  the 
close  of  each  term  the  residents  gave  a  reception  to  stu¬ 
dents  and  faculty  which  was  one  of  the  chief  social 
events  of  the  season.  Upon  this  comfortable  social 
basis  some  very  good  work  was  done. 

In  connection  with  these  classes  a  Hull-House  sum¬ 
mer  school  was  instituted  at  Rockford  College,  which 
was  most  generously  placed  at  our  disposal  by  the 
trustees.  For  ten  years  one  hundred  women  gathered 
there  for  six  weeks;  in  addition  there  were  always  men 
on  the  faculty,  and  a  small  group  of  young  men  among 
the  students,  who  were  lodged  in  the  gymnasium  build¬ 
ing.  The  outdoor  classes  in  bird  study  and  botany,  the 
serious  reading  of  literary  masterpieces,  the  boat  ex¬ 
cursions  on  the  Rock  River,  the  cooperative  spirit  of 
doing  the  housework  together,  the  satirical  commence¬ 
ments  in  parti-colored  caps  and  gowns,  lent  themselves 
toward  a  reproduction  of  the  comradeship  which  college 
life  fosters. 


392  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

As  each  member  of  the  faculty,  as  well  as  the  students, 
paid  three  dollars  a  week,  and  as  we  had  little  outlay 
beyond  the  actual  cost  of  food,  we  easily  defrayed  our 
expenses.  The  undertaking  was  so  simple  and  gratify- 
s  ing  in  results  that  it  might  well  be  reproduced  in  many 
college  buildings  which  are  set  in  the  midst  of  beautiful 
surroundings,  unused  during  the  two  months  of  the 
year,  when  hundreds  of  people,  able  to  pay  only  a 
moderate  price  for  lodgings  in  the  country,  can  find 

1  o  nothing  comfortable  and  no  mental  food  more  satisfy¬ 

ing  than  piazza  gossip. 

Every  Thursday  evening  during  the  first  years,  a 
public  lecture  came  to  be  an  expected  event  in  the 
neighborhood,  and  Hull-House  became  one  of  the  early 
1 5  University  Extension  centers,  first  in  connection  with 
an  independent  society  and  later  with  the  University  of 
Chicago.  One  of  the  Hull-House  trustees  was  so  im¬ 
pressed  with  the  value  of  this  orderly  and  continuous 
presentation  of  economic  subjects  that  he  endowed 
20  three  courses  in  a  downtown  center,  in  which  the 
lectures  were  free  to  any  one  who  chose  to  come.  He 
was  much  pleased  that  these  lectures  were  largely  at¬ 
tended  by  workingmen  who  ordinarily  prefer  that  an 
economic  subject  shall  be  presented  by  a  partisan,  and 

2  s  who  are  supremely  indifferent  to  examinations  and 

credits.  They  also  dislike  the  balancing  of  pro  and  con 
which  scholarly  instruction  implies,  and  prefer  to  be 
‘‘inebriated  on  raw  truth”  rather  than  to  sip  a  carefully 
prepared  draught  of  knowledge. 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


393 


Nevertheless  Bowen  Hall,  which  seats  seven  hundred 
and  fifty  people,  is  often  none  too  large  to  hold  the 
audiences  of  men  who  come  to  Hull-House  every  Sun¬ 
day  evening  during  the  winter  to  attend  the  illustrated 
lectures  provided  by  the  faculty  of  the  University  of 
Chicago,  and  others  who  kindly  give  their  services. 
These  courses  differ  enormously  in  their  popularity: 
one  on  European  capitals  and  their  social  significance 
was  followed  with  the  most  vivid  attention  and  sense 
of  participation  indicated  by  groans  and  hisses  when 
the  audience  was  reminded  of  an  unforgettable  feud 
between  Austria  and  her  Slavic  subjects,  or  when  they 
wildly  applauded  a  Polish  hero,  endeared  through  his 
tragic  failure. 

In  spite  of  the  success  of  these  Sunday  evening 
courses,  it  has  never  been  an  easy  undertaking  to  find 
acceptable  lecturers.  A  course  of  lectures  on  astronomy 
illustrated  by  stereopticon  slides  will  attract  a  large 
audience  the  first  week,  who  hope  to  hear  of  the  wonders 
of  the  heavens  and  the  relation  of  our  earth  thereto, 
but  instead  are  treated  to  spectrum  analyses  of  star 
dust,  or  the  latest  theory  concerning  the  milky  way. 
The  habit  of  research  and  the  desire  to  say  the  latest 
word  upon  any  subject  often  overcomes  the  sym¬ 
pathetic  understanding  of  his  audience  which  the 
lecturer  might  otherwise  develop,  and  he  insensibly 
drops  into  the  dull  terminology  of  the  classroom. 
There  are,  of  course,  notable  exceptions;  we  had  twelve 
gloriously  popular  talks  on  organic  evolution,  but  the 


394  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

lecturer  was  not  yet  a  professor  —  merely  a  university 
instructor  —  and  his  mind  was  still  eager  over  the 
marvel  of  it  all.  Fortunately  there  is  an  increasing 
number  of  lecturers  whose  matter  is  so  real,  so  definite, 
s  and  so  valuable,  that  in  an  attempt  to  give  it  an  exact 
equivalence  in  words,  they  utilize  the  most  direct  forms 
of  expression. 

It  sometimes  seems  as  if  the  men  of  substantial 
scholarship  were  content  to  leave  to  the  charlatan  the 
o  teaching  of  those  things  which  deeply  concern  the 
welfare  of  mankind,  and  that  the  mass  of  men  get  their 
intellectual  food  from  the  outcasts  of  scholarship,  who 
provide  millions  of  books,  pictures,  and  shows,  not  to 
instruct  and  guide,  but  for  the  sake  of  their  own  financial 
5  profit.  A  Settlement  soon  discovers  that  simple  people 
are  interested  in  large  and  vital  subjects  and  the  Hull- 
House  residents  themselves  at  one  time,  with  only 
partial  success,  undertook  to  give  a  series  of  lectures 
on  the  history  of  the  world,  beginning  with  the  nebular 
o  hypothesis  and  reaching  Chicago  itself  in  the  twenty- 
fifth  lecture!  Absurd  as  the  hasty  review  appears,  there 
is  no  doubt  that  the  beginner  in  knowledge  is  always 
eager  for  the  general  statement,  as  those  wise  old  teach¬ 
ers  of  the  people  well  knew,  when  they  put  the  history 
5  of  creation  on  the  stage  and  the  monks  themselves  be¬ 
came  the  actors.  I  recall  that  in  planning  my  first 
European  journey  I  had  soberly  hoped  in  two  years  to 
trace  the  entire  pattern  of  human  excellence  as  we 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


395 


passed  from  one  country  to  another,  in  the  shrines  popu¬ 
lar  affection  had  consecrated  to  the  saints,  in  the  fre¬ 
quented  statues  erected  to  heroes,  and  in  the  “worn 
blasonry  of  funeral  brasses”  —  an  illustration  that 
when  we  are  young  we  all  long  for  those  mountain  tops 
upon  which  we  may  soberly  stand  and  dream  of  our 
own  ephemeral  and  uncertain  attempts  at  righteousness. 
I  have  had  many  other  illustrations  of  this;  a  statement 
was  recently  made  to  me  by  a  member  of  the  Hull- 
House  Boys’  club,  who  had  been  unjustly  arrested  as 
an  accomplice  to  a  young  thief  and  held  in  the  police 
station  for  three  days,  that  during  his  detention  he 
“had  remembered  the  way  Jean  Valjean0  behaved 
when  he  was  everlastingly  pursued  by  that  policeman 
who  was  only  trying  to  do  right”;  “I  kept  seeing  the 
pictures  in  that  illustrated  lecture  you  gave  about  him, 
and  I  thought  it  would  be  queer  if  I  couldn’t  behave 
well  for  three  days  when  he  had  kept  it  up  for  years.” 

The  power  of  dramatic  action  may  unfortunately  be 
illustrated  in  other  ways.  During  the  weeks  when  all 
the  daily  papers  were  full  of  the  details  of  a  notorious 
murder  trial  in  New  York  and  all  the  hideous  events 
which  preceded  the  crime,  one  evening  I  saw  in  the 
street  cars  a  knot  of  working  girls  leaning  over  a  news¬ 
paper,  admiring  the  clothes,  the  beauty,  and  “sorrow¬ 
ful  expression”  of  the  unhappy  heroine.  In  the  midst 
of  the  trial  a  woman  whom  I  had  known  for  years  came 
to  talk  to  me  about  her  daughter,  shamefacedly  con- 


396  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

fessing  that  the  girl  was  trying  to  dress  and  look  like  the 
notorious  girl  in  New  York,  and  that  she  had  even  said 
to  her  mother  in  a  moment  of  defiance,  “Some  day  I 
shall  be  taken  into  court  and  then  I  shall  dress  just  as 
5  Evelyn  did  and  face  my  accusers  as  she  did  in  innocence 
and  beauty.” 

If  one  makes  calls  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  in  the 
homes  of  the  immigrant  colonies  near  Hull-House,  one 
finds  the  family  absorbed  in  the  Sunday  edition  of  a 
o  sensational  daily  newspaper,  even  those  who  cannot 
read,  quite  easily  following  the  comic  adventures  por¬ 
trayed  in  the  colored  pictures  of  the  supplement  or 
tracing  the  clew  of  a  murderer  carefully  depicted  by  a 
black  line  drawn  through  a  plan  of  the  houses  and 
5  streets. 

Sometimes  lessons  in  the  great  loyalties  and  group 
affections  come  through  life  itself  and  yet  in  such  a 
manner  that  one  cannot  but  deplore  it.  During  the 
teamsters’  strike  in  Chicago  several  years  ago  when 
o  class  bitterness  rose  to  a  dramatic  climax,  I  remember 
going  to  visit  a  neighborhood  boy  who  had  been  severely 
injured  when  he  had  taken  the  place  of  a  union  driver 
upon  a  coal  wagon.  As  I  approached  the  house  in  which 
he  lived,  a  large  group  of  boys  and  girls,  some  of  them 
5  very  little  children,  surrounded  me  to  convey  the 
exciting  information  that  “Jack  T.  was  a  ‘scab,’”  and 
that  I  couldn’t  go  in  there.  I  explained  to  the  excited 
children  that  his  mother,  who  was  a  friend  of  mine,  was 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


39  7 


in  trouble,  quite  irrespective  of  the  way  her  boy  had 
been  hurt.  The  crowd  around  me  outside  of  the  house 
of  the  “scab’'  constantly  grew  larger  and  I,  finally 
abandoning  my  attempt  at  explanation,  walked  in  only 
to  have  the  mother  say:  “Please  don’t  come  here.  5 
You  will  only  get  hurt,  too.”  Of  course  I  did  not  get 
hurt,  but  the  episode  left  upon  my  mind  one  of  the  most 
painful  impressions  I  have  ever  received  in  connection 
with  the  children  of  the  neighborhood.  In  addition  to 
all  else  are  the  lessons  of  loyalty  and  comradeship  to  1  o 
come  to  them  as  the  mere  reversals  of  class  antagonism? 
And  yet  it  was  but  a  trifling  incident  out  of  the  general 
spirit  of  bitterness  and  strife  which  filled  the  city. 

Therefore  the  residents  of  Hull-House  place  increas¬ 
ing  emphasis  upon  the  great  inspirations  and  solaces  of  1 5 
literature  and  are  unwilling  that  it  should  ever  languish 
as  a  subject  for  class  instruction  or  for  reading  parties. 
The  Shakespeare  club  has  lived  a  continuous  existence 
at  Hull-House  for  sixteen  years  during  which  time  its 
members  have  heard  the  leading  interpreters  of  Shake-  20 
speare,  both  among  scholars  and  players.  I  recall  that 
one  of  its  earliest  members  said  that  her  mind  was 
peopled  with  Shakespeare  characters  during  her  long 
hours  of  sewing  in  a  shop,  that  she  couldn’t  remember 
what  she  thought  about  before  she  joined  the  club,  and  25 
concluded  that  she  hadn’t  thought  about  anything  at 
all.  To  feed  the  mind  of  the  worker,  to  lift  it  above  the  V 
monotony  of  his  task,  and  to  connect  it  witj^i  the  large; 


398  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

world,  outside  of  his  immediate  surroundings,  has  al¬ 
ways  been  the  object  of  art,  perhaps  never  more  nobly 
fulfilled  than  by  the  great  English  bard.  Miss  Starr  has 
held  classes  in  Dante  and  Browning  for  many  years  and 
5  the  great  lines  are  conned  with  never  failing  enthusiasm. 
I  recall  Miss  Lathrop’s  Plato  club  and  an  audience  who 
listened  to  a  series  of  lectures  by  Dr.  John  Dewey  on 
“Social  Psychology, ”  as  genuine  intellectual  groups 
consisting  largely  of  people  from  the  immediate  neigh- 
o  borhood,  who  were  willing  to  make  “that  effort  from 
which  we  all  shrink,  the  effort  of  thought.”  But  while 
we  prize  these  classes  as  we  do  the  help  we  are  able  to 
give  to  the  exceptional  young  man  or  woman  who  reach¬ 
es  the  college  and  university  and  leaves  the  neighbor- 
s  hood  of  his  childhood  behind  him,  the  residents  of  Hull- 
House  feel  increasingly  that  the  educational  efforts  of 
a  Settlement  should  not  he  directed  primarily  to  repro¬ 
duce  the  college  type  of  culture,  but  to  work  out  a 
method  and  an  ideal  adapted  to  the  immediate  situa- 
otion.  They  feel  that  they  should  promote  a  culture 
which  will  not  set  its  possessor  aside  in  a  class  with 
others  like  himself,  but  which  will,  on  the  contrary, 
connect  him  with  all  sorts  of  people  by  his  ability  to 
understand  them  as  well  as  by  his  power  to  supplement 
s  their  present  surroundings  with  the  historic  back¬ 
ground.  Among  the  hundreds  of  immigrants  who  have 
for  years  attended  classes  at  Hull-House  designed 
primarily  |o  teach  the  English  language,  dozens  of 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


399 


them  have  struggled  to  express  in  the  newly  acquired 
tongue  some  of  those  hopes  and  longings  which  had  so 
much  to  do  with  their  emigration. 

A  series  of  plays  was  thus  written  by  a  young  Bohe¬ 
mian;  essays  by  a  Russian  youth,  outpouring  sorrows  5 
rivaling  Werther0  himself  and  yet  containing  the 
precious  stuff  of  youth’s  perennial  revolt  against  ac¬ 
cepted  wrong;  stories  of  Russian  oppression  and  petty 
injustices  throughout  which  the  desire  for  free  America 
became  a  crystallized  hope;  an  attempt  to  portray  the  1 
Jewish  day  of  Atonement,  in  such  wise  that  even  in¬ 
dividualistic  Americans  may  catch  a  glimpse  of  that 
deeper  national  life  which  has  survived  all  transplant¬ 
ing  and  expresses  itself  in  forms  so  ancient  that  they 
appear  grotesque  to  the  ignorant  spectator.  I  remember  1 
a  pathetic  effort  on  the  part  of  a  young  Russian  Jewess 
to  describe  the  vivid  inner  life  of  an  old  Talmud  scholar, 
probably  her  uncle  or  father,  as  of  one  persistently  oc¬ 
cupied  with  the  grave  and  important  things  of  the 
spirit,  although  when  brought  into  sharp  contact  with  2 
busy  and  overworked  people,  he  inevitably  appeared 
self-absorbed  and  slothful.  Certainly  no  one  who  had 
read  her  paper  could  again  see  such  an  old  man  in  his 
praying  shawl  bent  over  his  crabbed  book,  without  a 
sense  of  understanding.  2 

On  the  other  hand,  one  of  the  most  pitiful  periods 
in  the  drama  of  the  much-praised  young  American  who 
attempts  to  rise  in  life,  is  the  time  when  his  educational 


4oo  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

requirements  seem  to  have  locked  him  up  and  made 
him  rigid.  He  fancies  himself  shut  off  from  his  un¬ 
educated  family  and  misunderstood  by  his  friends.  He 
is  bowed  down  by  his  mental  accumulations  and  often 
5  gets  no  farther  than  to  carry  them  through  life  as  a 
great  burden,  and  not  once  does  he  obtain  a  glimpse  of 
the  delights  of  knowledge. 

The  teacher  in  a  Settlement  is  constantly  put  upon 
his  mettle  to  discover  methods  of  instruction  which 
o  shall  make  knowledge  quickly  available  to  his  pupils, 
and  I  should  like  here  to  pay  my  tribute  of  admiration 
to  the  dean  of  our  educational  department,  Miss  Lands- 
berg,  and  to  the  many  men  and  women  who  every 
winter  come  regularly  to  Hull-House,  putting  untiring 
s  energy  into  the  endless  task  of  teaching  the  newly  ar¬ 
rived  immigrant  the  first  use  of  a  language  of  which  he 
has  such  desperate  need.  Even  a  meager  knowledge  of 
English  may  mean  an  opportunity  to  work  in  a  factory 
versus  nonemployment,  or  it  may  mean  a  question  of 
olife  or  death  when  a  sharp  command  must  be  under¬ 
stood  in  order  to  avoid  the  danger  of  a  descending  crane. 

In  response  to  a  demand  for  an  education  which 
should  be  immediately  available,  classes  have  been 
established  and  grown  apace  in  cooking,  dressmaking, 
s  and  millinery.  A  girl  who  attends  them  will  often  say 
that  she  “expects  to  marry  a  workingman  next  spring,” 
and  because  she  has  worked  in  a  factory  so  long  she 
knows  “little  about  a  house.”  Sometimes  classes  are 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


401 


composed  of  young  matrons  of  like  factory  experiences. 

I  recall  one  of  them  whose  husband  had  become  so 
desperate  after  two  years  of  her  unskilled  cooking  that 
he  had  threatened  to  desert  her  and  go  where  he  could 
get  “decent  food,”  as  she  confided  to  me  in  a  tearful  5 
interview,  when  she  followed  my  advice  to  take  the 
Hull-House  courses  in  cooking,  and  at  the  end  of  six 
months  reported  a  united  and  happy  home. 

Two  distinct  trends  are  found  in  response  to  these 
classes:  the  first  is  for  domestic  training,  and  the  other  10 
is  for  trade  teaching  which  shall  enable  the  poor  little 
milliner  and  dressmaker  apprentices  to  shorten  the  two 
years  of  errand  running  which  is  supposed  to  teach  them 
their  trade. 

The  beginning  of  trade  instruction  has  been  already  1 5 
evolved  in  connection  with  the  Hull-House  Boys’  club. 
The  ample  Boys’  club  building  presented  to  Hull-House 
three  years  ago  by  one  of  our  trustees  has  afforded  well- 
equipped  shops  for  work  in  wood,  iron,  and  brass;  for 
smithing  in  copper  and  tin ;  for  commercial  photography,  2  o 
for  printing,  for  telegraphy,  and  electrical  construction. 
These  shops  have  been  filled  with  boys  who  are  eager 
for  that  which  seems  to  give  them  a  clew  to  the  in¬ 
dustrial  life  all  about  them.  These  classes  meet  twice  a 
week  and  are  taught  by  intelligent  workingmen,  who  2  5 
apparently  give  the  boys  what  they  want  better  than 
do  the  strictly  professional  teachers.  While  these  classes 
in  no  sense  provide  a  trade  training,  they  often  enable  a 


402  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

boy  to  discover  his  aptitude  and  help  him  in  the  selec¬ 
tion  of  what  he  “wants  to  be”  by  reducing  the  trades 
to  embryonic  forms.  The  factories  are  so  complicated 
that  the  boy  brought  in  contact  with  them,  unless  he 
s  has  some  preliminary  preparation,  is  apt  to  become  con¬ 
fused.  In  pedagogical  terms,  he  loses  his  “power  of 
orderly  reaction”  and  is  often  so  discouraged  or  so  over- 
stimulated  in  his  very  first  years  of  factory  life  that  his 
future  usefulness  is  seriously  impaired, 
i  o  One  of  Chicago’s  most  significant  experiments  in  the 
direction  of  correlating  the  schools  with  actual  industry 
was  for  several  years  carried  on  in  a  public  school  build¬ 
ing  situated  near  Hull-House,  in  which  the  bricklayers’ 
apprentices  were  taught  eight  hours  a  day  in  special 

1  s  classes  during  the  non-bricklaying  season.  This  early 

public  school  venture  anticipated  the  very  successful 
arrangement  later  carried  on  in  Cincinnati,  in  Pittsburg, 
and  in  Chicago  itself,  whereby  a  group  of  boys  at  work 
in  a  factory  alternate  month  by  month  with  another 
20  group  who  are  in  school  and  are  thus  intelligently  con¬ 
ducted  into  the  complicated  processes  of  modern  in¬ 
dustry.  But  for  a  certain  type  of  boy  who  has  been 
demoralized  by  the  constant  change  and  excitement  of 
street  life,  even  these  apprenticeship  classes  are  too 

2  s  strenuous,  and  he  has  to  be  lured  into  the  path  of  knowl¬ 

edge  by  all  sorts  of  appeals. 

It  sometimes  happens  that  boys  are  held  in  the  Hull- 
House  classes  for  weeks  by  their  desire  for  the  excite- 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


403 


ment  of  placing  burglar  alarms  under  the  door  mats. 
But  to  enable  the  possessor  of  even  a  little  knowledge 
to  thus  play  with  it,  is  to  decoy  his  feet  at  least  through 
the  first  steps  of  the  long,  hard  road  of  learning,  al¬ 
though  even  in  this,  the  teacher  must  proceed  warily.  5 
A  typical  street  boy  who  was  utterly  absorbed  in  a 
wood-carving  class,  abruptly  left  never  to  return  when 
he  was  told  to  use  some  simple  calculations  in  the  laying 
out  of  the  points.  He  evidently  scented  .the  approach 
of  his  old  enemy,  arithmetic,  and  fled  the  field.  On  the  10 
other  hand,  we  have  come  across  many  cases  in  which 
boys  have  vainly  tried  to  secure  such  opportunities  for 
themselves.  During  the  trial  of  a  boy  of  ten  recently 
arrested  for  truancy,  it  developed  that  he  had  spent 
many  hours  watching  the  electrical  construction  in  a  1 5 
downtown  building,  and  many  others  in  the  public 
library  “reading  about  electricity. ”  Another  boy,  who 
was  taken  from  school  early,  when  his  father  lost  both 
of  his  legs  in  a  factory  accident,  tried  in  vain  to  find  a 
place  for  himself  “with  machinery.”  He  was  declared  20 
too  small  for  any  such  position,  and  for  four  years 
worked  as  an  errand  boy,  during  which  time  he  steadily 
turned  in  his  unopened  pay  envelope  for  the  use  of  the 
household.  At  the  end  of  the  fourth  year  the  boy  dis¬ 
appeared,  to  the  great  distress  of  his  invalid  father  and  25 
his  poor  mother,  whose  day  washings  became  the  sole 
support  of  the  family.  He  had  beaten  his  way  to 
Kansas  City,  hoping  “they  wouldn’t  be  so  particular 


4o4  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

there  about  a  fellow’s  size.”  He  came  back  at  the  end 
of  six  weeks  because  he  felt  sorry  for  his  mother  who, 
aroused  at  last  to  a  realization  of  his  unbending  pur¬ 
pose,  applied  for  help  to  the  Juvenile  Protective  As- 
5  sociation.  They  found  a  position  for  the  boy  in  a 
machine  shop  and  an  opportunity  for  evening  classes. 

Out  of  the  fifteen  hundred  members  of  the  Hull- 
House  Boys’  club,  hundreds  seem  to  respond  only  to 
the  opportunities  for  recreation,  and  many  of  the  older 
i  o  ones  apparently  care  only  for  the  bowling  and  the 
billiards.  And  yet  tournaments  and  match  games 
under  supervision  and  regulated  hours  are  a  great  ad  ¬ 
vance  over  the  sensual  and  exhausting  pleasures  to  be 
found  so  easily  outside  the  club.  These  organized  sports 

1  s  readily  connect  themselves  with  the  Hull-House  gym¬ 

nasium  and  with  all  those  enthusiasms  which  are  $o 
mysteriously  aroused  by  athletics. 

Our  gymnasium  has  been  filled  with  large  and  en¬ 
thusiastic  classes  for  eighteen  years  in  spite  of  the 

2  o  popularity  of  dancing  and  other  possible  substitutes, 

while  the  Saturday  evening  athletic  contests  have  be¬ 
come  a  feature  of  the  neighborhood.  The  Settlement 
strives  for  that  type  of  gymnastics  which  is  at  least 
partly  a  matter  of  character,  for  that  training  which 
2  5  presupposes  abstinence  and  the  curbing  of  impulse,  as 
well  as  for  those  athletic  contests  in  which  the  mind  of 
the  contestant  must  be  vigilant  to  keep  the  body  closely 
to  the  rules  of  the  game.  As  one  sees  in  rhythmic  mo- 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


405 


tion  the  slim  bodies  of  a  class  of  lads,  “that  scrupulous 
and  uncontaminate  purity  of  form  which  recommended 
itself  even  to  the  Greeks  as  befitting  messengers  from 
the  gods,  if  such  messengers  should  come/’  one  offers 
up  in  awkward  prosaic  form  the  very  essence  of  that  old  5 
prayer,  “Grant  them  with  feet  so  light  to  pass  through 
life.”  But  while  the  glory  stored  up  for  Olympian  win¬ 
ners0  was  at  most  a  handful  of  parsley,  an  ode,  fame 
for  family  and  city,  on  the  other  hand,  when  the  men 
and  boys  from  the  Hull-House  gymnasium  bring  back  10 
their  cups  and  medals,  one’s  mind  is  filled  with  some¬ 
thing  like  foreboding  in  the  reflection  that  too  much 
success  may  lead  the  winners  into  that  professionalism 
which  is  so  associated  with  betting  and  so  close  to 
pugilism.  Candor,  however,  compels  me  to  state  that  1 5 
a  long  acquaintance  with  the  acrobatic  folk  who  have 
to  do  with  the  circus,  a  large  number  of  whom  practice 
in  our  gymnasium  every  winter,  has  raised  our  estimate 
of  that  profession. 

Young  people  who  work  long  hours  at  sedentary  oc-  so 
cupations,  factories  and  offices,  need  perhaps  more  than 
anything  else  the  freedom  and  ease  to  be  acquired  from 
a  symmetrical  muscular  development  and  are  quick  to 
respond  to  that  fellowship  which  athletics  apparently 
afford  more  easily  than  anything  else.  The  Greek  im-  25 
migrants  form  large  classes  and  are  eager  to  reproduce 
the  remnants  of  old  methods  of  wrestling,  and  other  bits 
of  classic  lore  which  they  still  possess,  and  when  one  of 


4o 6  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  Greeks  won  a  medal  in  a  wrestling  match  which 
represented  the  championship  of  the  entire  city,  it  was 
quite  impossible  that  he  should  present  it  to  the  Hull- 
House  trophy  chest  without  a  classic  phrase  which  he 
s  recited  most  gravely  and  charmingly. 

It  was  in  connection  with  a  large  association  of  Greek 
lads  that  Hull-House  finally  lifted  its  long  restriction 
against  military  drill.  If  athletic  contests  are  the 
residuum  of  warfare  first  waged  against  the  conqueror 
o  without  and  then  against  the  tyrants  within  the  State, 
the  modern  Greek  youth  is  still  in  the  first  stage  so  far 
as  his  inherited  attitude  against  the  Turk  is  concerned. 
Each  lad  believes  that  at  any  moment  he  may  be  called 
home  to  fight  this  long  time  enemy  of  Greece.  With 
s  such  a  genuine  motive  at  hand,  it  seemed  mere  affecta¬ 
tion  to  deny  the  use  of  our  boys’  club  building  and 
gymnasium  for  organized  drill,  although  happily  it 
forms  but  a  small  part  of  the  activities  of  the  Greek 
Educational  Association. 

o  Having  thus  confessed  to  military  drill  countenanced 
if  not  encouraged  at  Hull-House,  it  is  perhaps  only  fair 
to  relate  an  early  experience  of  mine  with  the  “Colum¬ 
bian  Guards,”  an  organization  of  the  World’s  Fair 
summer.  Although  the  Hull-House  squad  was  organ- 
5  ized  as  the  others  were  with  the  motto  of  a  clean  city,  it 
was  very  anxious  for  military  drill.  This  request  not 
only  shocked  my  nonresistant  principles,  but  seemed  to 
afford  an  opportunity  to  find  a  substitute  for  the  mill- 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


407 


tary  tactics  which  were  used  in  the  boys’  brigades  every¬ 
where,  even  in  those  connected  with  churches.  As  the 
cleaning  of  the  filthy  streets  and  alleys  was  the  ostensi¬ 
ble  purpose  of  the  Columbian  Guards,  I  suggested  to  the 
boys  that  we  work  out  a  drill  with  sewer  spades,  which  5 
with  their  long,  narrow  blades  and  shortened  handles 
were  not  so  unlike  bayoneted  guns  in  size,  weight,  and 
general  appearance  but  that  much  of  the  usual  military 
drill  could  be  readapted.  While  I  myself  was  present  at 
the  gymnasium  to  explain  that  it  was  nobler  to  drill  in  10 
imitation  of  removing  disease-breeding  filth  than  to 
drill  in  simulation  of  warfare;  while  I  distractedly  re¬ 
adapted  tales  of  chivalry  to  this  modern  rescuing  of 
the  endangered  and  distressed,  the  new  drill  went  for¬ 
ward  in  some  sort  of  fashion,  but  so  surely  as  I  with-  1 5 
drew,  the  drillmaster  would  complain  that  our  troops 
would  first  grow  self-conscious,  then  demoralized,  and 
finally  flatly  refuse  to  go  on.  Throughout  the  years 
since  the  failure  of  this  Quixotic  experiment,  I  occasion¬ 
ally  find  one  of  these  sewer  spades  in  a  Hull-House  20 
storeroom,  too  truncated  to  be  used  for  its  original  pur¬ 
pose  and  too  prosaic  to  serve  the  purpose  for  which  it 
was  bought.  I  can  only  look  at  it  in  the  forlorn  hope 
that  it  may  foreshadow  that  piping  time  when  the 
weapons  of  warfare  shall  be  turned  into  the  implements  25 
of  civic  salvation. 

Before  closing  this  chapter  on  Socialized  Education, 
it  is  only  fair  to  speak  of  the  education  accruing  to  the 


4o8  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Hull-House  residents  themselves  during  their  years  of 
living  in  what  at  least  purports  to  be  a  center  for  social 
and  educational  activity. 

While  a  certain  number  of  the  residents  are  primarily 
5  interested  in  charitable  administration  and  the  amelior¬ 
ation  which  can  be  suggested  only  by  those  who  know 
actual  conditions,  there  are  other  residents  identified 
with  the  House  from  its  earlier  years  to  whom  the 
groups  of  immigrants  make  the  historic  appeal,  and  who 
o  use,  not  only  their  linguistic  ability,  but  all  the  resource 
they  can  command  of  travel  and  reading  to  qualify 
themselves  for  intelligent  living  in  the  immigrant  quar¬ 
ter  of  the  city.  I  remember  one  resident  lately  returned 
from  a  visit  in  Sicily,  who  was  able  to  interpret  to  a  be- 
swildered  judge  the  ancient  privilege  of  a  jilted  lover  to 
scratch  the  cheek  of  his  faithless  sweetheart  with  the 
edge  of  a  coin.  Although  the  custom  in  America  had 
degenerated  into  a  knife  slashing,  after  the  manner  of 
foreign  customs  here,  and  although  the  Sicilian  deserved 
o  punishment,  the  incident  was  yet  lifted  out  of  the 
slough  of  mere  brutal  assault,  and  the  interpretation 
won  the  gratitude  of  many  Sicilians. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  residents  in  a  Settlement  too 
often  move  towards  their  ends  “with  hurried  and 
s  ignoble  gait,”  putting  forth  thorns  in  their  eagerness  to 
bear  grapes.  It  is  always  easy  for  those  in  pursuit  of 
ends  which  they  consider  of  overwhelming  importance 
to  become  themselves  thin  and  impoverished  in  spirit 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


409 


and  temper,  to  gradually  develop  a  dark,  mistaken  eager¬ 
ness  alternating  with  fatigue,  which  supersedes  “the 
great  and  gracious  ways”  so  much  more  congruous 
with  worthy  aims. 

Partly  because  of  this  universal  tendency,  partly  be-  5 
cause  a  Settlement  shares  the  perplexities  of  its  times 
and  is  never  too  dogmatic  concerning  the  final  truth, 
the  residents  would  be  glad  to  make  the  daily  life  at  the 
Settlement  “conform  to  every  shape  and  mode  of 
excellence.”  10 

It  may  not  be  true 

“That  the  good  are  always  the  merry 
Save  by  an  evil  chance,” 

but  a  Settlement  would  make  clear  that  one  need  not 
be  heartless  and  flippant  in  order  to  be  merry,  nor  1 5 
solemn  in  order  to  be  wise.  Therefore  quite  as  Hull- 
House  tries  to  redeem  billiard  tables  from  the  associa¬ 
tion  of  gambling,  and  dancing  from  the  temptations  of 
the  public  dance  halls,  so  it  would  associate  with  a  life 
of  upright  purpose  those  more  engaging  qualities  which  20 
in  the  experience  of  the  neighborhood  are  too  often  con¬ 
nected  with  dubious  aims. 

Throughout  the  history  of  Hull-House  many  in¬ 
quiries  have  been  made  concerning  the  religion  of  the 
residents,  and  the  reply  that  they  are  as  diversified  in  25 
belief  and  in  the  ardor  of  the  inner  life  as  any  like  num¬ 
ber  of  people  in  a  college  or  similar  group,  apparently 


4io  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

does  not  carry  conviction.  I  recall  that  after  a  house  for 
men  residents  had  been  opened  on  Polk  Street  and  the 
residential  force  at  Hull-House  numbered  twenty,  we 
made  an  effort  to  come  together  on  Sunday  evenings 
s  in  a  household  service,  hoping  thus  to  express  our  moral 
unity  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  represented  many 
creeds.  But  although  all  of  us  reverently  knelt  when 
the  High  Church  resident  read  the  evening  service  and 
bowed  our  heads  when  the  evangelical  resident  led  in 
xo  prayer  after  his  chapter,  and  although  we  sat  respect¬ 
fully  through  the  twilight  when  a  resident  read  her 
favorite  passages  from  Plato  and  another  from  Abt 
Vogler,  we  concluded  at  the  end  of  the  winter  that  this 
was  not  religious  fellowship  and  that  we  did  not  care  for 
i  s  another  reading  club.  So  it  was  reluctantly  given  up, 
and  we  found  that  it  was  quite  as  necessary  to  come 
together  on  the  basis  of  the  deed  and  our  common  aim 
inside  the  household  as  it  was  in  the  neighborhood  itself. 
I  once  had  a  conversation  on  the  subject  with  the  ward- 
2oen  of  Oxford  House,  who  kindly  invited  me  to  the  even¬ 
ing  service  held  for  the  residents  in  a  little  chapel  on 
the  top  floor  of  the  Settlement.  All  the  residents  were 
High  Churchmen  to  whom  the  service  was  an  important 
and  reverent  part  of  the  day.  Upon  my  reply  to  a 
as  query  of  the  warden  that  the  residents  of  Hull-House 
could  not  come  together  for  religious  worship  because 
there  were  among  us  Jews,  Roman  Catholics,  English 
Churchmen,  Dissenters,  and  a  few  agnostics,  and  that 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


411 

we  had  found  unsatisfactory  the  diluted  form  of  worship 
which  we  could  carry  on  together,  he  replied  that  it 
must  be  most  difficult  to  work  with  a  group  so  diversi¬ 
fied,  for  he  depended  upon  the  evening  service  to  clear 
away  any  difficulties  which  the  day  had  involved  and 
to  bring  the  residents  to  a  religious  consciousness  of 
their  common  aim.  I  replied  that  this  diversity  of 
creed  was  part  of  the  situation  in  American  Settlements, 
as  it  was  our  task  to  live  in  a  neighborhood  of  many 
nationalities  and  faiths,  and  that  it  might  be  possible 
that  among  such  diversified  people  it  was  better  that 
the  Settlement  corps  should  also  represent  varying 
religious  beliefs. 

A  wise  man  has  told  us  that  “men  are  once  for  all  so 
made  that  they  prefer  a  rational  world  to  believe  in  and 
to  live  in,”  but  that  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  find  a  world 
rational  as  to  its  intellectual,  aesthetic,  moral,  and 
practical  aspects.  Certainly  it  is  no  easy  matter  if  the 
place  selected  is  of  the  very  sort  where  the  four  aspects 
are  apparently  furthest  from  perfection,  but  an  under¬ 
taking  resembling  this  is  what  the  Settlement  gradually 
becomes  committed  to,  as  its  function  is  revealed 
through  the  reaction  on  its  consciousness  of  its  own 
experiences.  Because  of  this  fourfold  undertaking,  the 
Settlement  has  gathered  into  residence  people  of  widely 
diversified  tastes  and  interests  and  in  Hull-House,  at 
least,  the  group  has  been  surprisingly  permanent.  The 
majority  of  the  present  corps  of  forty  residents  support 


412  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

themselves  by  their  business  and  professional  occupa¬ 
tions  in  the  city,  giving  only  their  leisure  time  to  Settle¬ 
ment  undertakings.  This  in  itself  tends  to  continuity 
of  residence  and  has  certain  advantages.  Among  the 
5  present  staff,  of  whom  the  larger  number  have  been  in 
residence  for  more  than  twelve  years,  there  are  the 
secretary  of  the  City  Club,  two  practicing  physicians, 
several  attorneys,  newspaper  men,  business  men, 
teachers,  scientists,  artists,  musicians,  lecturers  in  the 
o  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy,  officers  in  The  Juve¬ 
nile  Protective  Association  and  in  The  League  for  the 
Protection  of  Immigrants,  a  visiting  nurse,  a  sanitary 
inspector,  and  others. 

We  have  also  worked  out  during  our  years  of  residence 
5  a  plan  of  living  which  may  be  called  cooperative,  for 
the  families  and  individuals  who  rent  the  Hull-House 
apartments  have  the  use  of  the  central  kitchen  and 
dining  room  so  far  as  they  care  for  them;  many  of  them 
work  for  hours  every  week  in  the  studios  and  shops;  the 
o  theater  and  drawing-rooms  are  available  for  such  social 
organization  as  they  care  to  form;  the  entire  group  of 
thirteen  buildings  is  heated  and  lighted  from  a  central 
plant.  During  the  years,  the  common  human  experi¬ 
ences  have  gathered  about  the  House;  funeral  services 
shave  been  held  there,  marriages  and  christenings,  and 
many  memories  hold  us  to  each  other  as  well  as  to  our 
neighbors.  Each  resident,  of  course,  carefully  defrays 
his  own  expenses,  and  his  relations  to  his  fellow  residents 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION 


4i3 


are  not  unlike  those  of  a  college  professor  to  his  col¬ 
leagues.  The  depth  and  strength  of  his  relation  to  the 
neighborhood  must  depend  very  largely  upon  himself 
and  upon  the  genuine  friendships  he  has  been  able  to 
make.  His  relation  to  the  city  as  a  whole  comes  largely  5 
through  his  identification  with  those  groups  who  are 
carrying  forward  the  reforms  which  a  Settlement 
neighborhood  so  sadly  needs  and  with  which  residence 
has  made  him  familiar. 

Life  in  the  Settlement  discovers  above  all  what  has  10 
been  called  “the  extraordinary  pliability  of  human 
nature,”  and  it  seems  impossible  to  set  any  bounds  to 
the  moral  capabilities  which  might  unfold  under  ideal 
civic  and  educational  conditions.  But  in  order  to  obtain 
these  conditions,  the  Settlement  recognizes  the  need  of  1 5 
cooperation,  both  with  the  radical  and  the  conservative, 
and  from  the  very  nature  of  the  case  the  Settlement  can¬ 
not  limit  its  friends  to  any  one  political  party  or 
economic  school. 

The  Settlement  casts  aside  none  of  those  things  20 
which  cultivated  men  have  come  to  consider  reasonable 
and  goodly,  but  it  insists  that  those  belong  as  well  to 
that  great  body  of  people  who,  because  of  toilsome  and 
underpaid  labor,  are  unable  to  procure  them  for  them¬ 
selves.  Added  to  this  is  a  profound  conviction  that  the  25 
common  stock  of  intellectual  enjoyment  should  not  be 
difficult  of  access  because  of  the  economic  position  of 
him  who  would  approach  it,  that  those  “best  results  of 


4i4  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

civilization5’  upon  which  depend  the  finer  and  freer 
aspects  of  living  must  be  incorporated  into  our  common 
life  and  have  free  mobility  through  all  elements  of 
society  if  we  would  have  our  democracy  endure. 

5  The  educational  activities  of  a  Settlement,  as  well  as 
its  philanthropic,  civic,  and  social  undertakings,  are  but 
differing  manifestations  of  the  attempt  to  socialize 
democracy,  as  is  the  very  existence  of  the  Settlement 
itself. 


NOTES 


5:14.  “the  winds  that  come  from  the  fields  of  sleep.” 

See  Wordsworth’s  Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality  in  Early 
Childhood  for  exact  quotation. 

12:18.  Shorter  Catechism.  The  Presbyterian  Church  uses 
the  Westminster  Assembly’s  Catechism,  or  book  of  questions 
and  answers  on  the  church  doctrines  and  principles  of  re¬ 
ligion,  in  two  forms,  the  shorter,  or  condensed,  and  the 
longer.  The  first  named  is  intended  especially  for  use  with 
children. 

14:6.  Hawthorne’s  “Lime-Burner.”  Ethan  Brand,  hero 
of  Hawthorne’s  short  story,  who  goes  as  a  youth  seeking  the 
“unpardonable  sin”  mentioned  in  the  Bible,  only  to  find 
after  many  years  that  he  has  been  unconsciously  com¬ 
mitting  it  himself. 

15:28.  Vulgate.  The  Latin  version  of  the  Scriptures, 
accepted  as  the  authorized  version  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church. 

18:24.  Joseph  Mazzini.  (1805-72.)  An  Italian  patriot, 
born  at  Genoa,  who  devoted  his  entire  life  to  freeing  Italy 
from  tyranny  at  home  and  abroad.  While  in  prison  in  1830, 
he  mapped  out  an  organization  to  be  known  as  “Young 
Italy,”  through  which  he  worked  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Its 
publicly-avowed  aims  were  the  freeing  of  Italy  from  domestic 
and  foreign  tyranny  and  its  unification  under  a  republican 
form  of  government.  The  means  were  to  be  education  and, 
where  advisable,  insurrection  by  guerilla  bands.  Mazzini 
lived  to  see  Italy  free  and  united,  but  not  as  a  republic. 

4G 


NOTES 


416 

19:11.  Hapsburg.  The  name  of  the  famous  family  from 
which  have  sprung  the  dukes  and  archdukes  of  Austria  since 
1282,  the  kings  of  Hungary  and  Bohemia  since  1526  and  the 
emperors  of  Austria  since  1804.  The  Hapsburgs  were  also 
Roman  emperors  and  German  kings  from  1438  to  1806  and 
kings  of  Spain  from  1516  to  1700.  The  last  Austrian  emperor 
died  in  exile  following  the  World  War,  when  Austria’s 
holdings  were  disrupted  to  form  several  smaller  states  on 
racial  lines. 

23:23.  Walter  Pater.  (1839-94.)  An  English  essayist, 
noted  for  his  wonderfully  polished  and  beautiful  style.  As  a 
young  man  he  had  intended  becoming  a  clergyman,  but, 
under  the  influence  of  his  reading  at  Oxford  University,  his 
faith  in  Christianity  became  shaken,  and  he  turned  to  writing 
instead.  All  his  writings  are  more  or  less  tinged  with  the 
mental  conflict  brought  on  by  his  religious  struggle. 

27:6.  Governor  Oglesby.  Richard  James  Oglesby  (1824- 
99)  served  in  both  the  Mexican  and  the  Civil  wars,  rising  to 
the  rank  of  major  general  in  the  latter.  He  was  governor  of 
Illinois  in  1872;  was  reelected,  but  resigned  to  become  senator 
from  Illinois,  1873-9.  He  served  again  as  governor  during 
1885-9. 

28:19.  Lincoln-Douglas  debates.  In  1858,  Lincoln  was/ 
the  candidate  of  the  newly-organized  Republican  Party  for 
senator  from  Illinois,  and  Stephen  A.  Douglas  the  Demo¬ 
cratic.  Following  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  by  ) 
the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill  of  1854,  slavery  was  the  chief 
issue.  Lincoln  challenged  Douglas  to  meet  the  same  audiences 
during  the  coming  campaign.  Douglas  accepted,  but  cleverly 
arranged  the  time  to  get  four  opening  and  closing  speeches 
to  Lincoln’s  three.  Douglas,  who  was  acknowledged  to  be 
the  best  speaker  in  Congress,  took  with  the  crowd  and  won 
the  greater  applause,  while  Lincoln  left  the  deeper  impression 
and  set  the  people  thinking.  Douglas  was  elected  senator, 


NOTES 


4i7 


but  two  years  later  Lincoln  won  the  presidency,  largely  as 
an  outcome  of  the  currents  of  thought  set  in  motion  by  the 
great  joint  debate.  The  speeches  are  still  studied  by  young 
speakers  seeking  models  in  debate  and  oratory. 

28:22.  Little  Tad.  Lincoln’s  much-loved  little  son,  Thad- 
deus,  his  father’s  constant  companion. 

29:3.  Sympathetic  strikes.  A  sympathetic  strike  is  one 
undertaken  by  a  body  of  workmen,  who  have  no  special 
grievance  of  their  own,  in  behalf  of  another  body  of  workers 
on  strike.  It  is  of  recent  development  and  is  the  working¬ 
man’s  recognition  of  “the  solidarity  of  labor”;  that  is,  the 
principle  that  labor’s  interests  are  everywhere  the  same  and 
that  an  injury  to  one  is  an  injury  to  all.  The  Pullman  strike 
of  1894  was  a  sympathetic  strike. 

29:5.  St.  Gaudens  statue.  The  statue  of  Lincoln,  unveiled 
in  Lincoln  Park,  Chicago,  in  1887,  is  still  considered  the 
finest  portrait  statue  in  America.  It  is  the  work  of  Augustus 
St.  Gaudens  (1848-1907),  an  American  sculptor,  born  in 
Dublin  of  Irish  and  French  parentage.  In  the  opinion  of 
eminent  critics,  “In  simple  dignity  of  conception,  subtle 
combination  of  the  real  with  the  ideal,  quiet  strength  and 
intensely  human  appeal,  the  Lincoln  statue  surpasses.” 

31:2.  Lyman  Trumbull.  (1813-96.)  A  lawyer  who  served 
in  the  Illinois  Legislature  in  1840.  He  was  Secretary  of  State 
for  Illinois,  1841-2,  and  justice  of  the  Illinois  Supreme  Court, 
1848-53.  He  was  senator  from  Illinois,  1855-73.  During  the 
sympathetic  strikes  of  1894  (see  29:3),  Mr.  Trumbull  de¬ 
fended  the  imprisoned  strike  leaders. 

34:12.  Arnold  Toynbee.  (1852-83.)  An  English  social  re¬ 
former  and  economist,  who  died  at  the  early  age  of  3 1  as  a 
result  of  overwork  in  behalf  of  the  poor  in  the  Whitechapel 
slum  district  of  East  London.  In  his  Whitechapel  work,  he 
had  been  closely  associated  with  Canon  A.  S.  Barnett.  (See 
102:26.)  In  commemoration  of  Toynbee’s  efforts  to  aid  the 


NOTES 


418 


poor,  Toynbee  Hall,  the  first  of  many  settlement  houses  in 
the  East  Side  of  London,  was  erected  for  the  purpose  of  up¬ 
lifting  and  brightening  the  lives  of  the  poor.  How  much 
Miss  Addams  owed  to  the  influence  of  Toynbee  Hall  may  be 
judged  from  her  frequent  references  to  it  in  her  account  of 
the  influences  leading  up  to  the  founding  of  Hull-House. 

35:27.  Caird’s  “Evolution  of  Religion.”  Published  in  1893 
by  Edward  Caird  (1835-1908),  an  English  educator  and 
philosopher.  Mr.  Caird  was  professor  of  moral  philosophy  at 
Glasgow  University  for  thirty-eight  years  and  succeeded 
Doctor  Jowett  as  master  of  Baliol  College  in  1893,  serving 
until  two  years  before  his  death. 

37:21.  Jowett.  Benjamin  Jowett  (1817-93)  was  a  the¬ 
ologian,  a  tutor,  a  university  reformer,  and  a  great  master  of 
a  great  college.  His  best  claim  to  remembrance,  according 
to  those  who  knew  and  worked  with  him,  was  his  greatness 
as  a  moral  teacher.  From  1870  until  his  death,  he  was  master 
of  Baliol  College,  Oxford,  a  college  which  has  a  high  reputa¬ 
tion  for  scholarship. 

39:6.  Smith  College.  A  college  for  women,  founded  at 
Northampton,  Mass.,  in  1875,  with  funds  left  for  that  pur¬ 
pose  by  Miss  Sophia  Smith  (1796-1870).  Miss  Smith  herself 
outlined  the  plans  for  the  college,  which  has  become  one  of 
the  largest  in  the  world  for  women. 

40:2.  Mount  Holyoke.  A  pioneer  college  for  women, 
founded  by  Mary  Lyon  (1797-1849)  at  South  Hadley,  Mass., 
in  1836.  The  school,  which  was  opened  in  1837,  has  a  reputa¬ 
tion  for  thorough  scholarship. 

40:21.  Aristotle.  (384-322B.C.)  A  great  Greek  philosopher, 
a  pupil  of  Plato,  and  founder  of  what  is  known  as  the  Aristo- 
tleian  school  of  philosophy. 

40:22.  Boswell’s  Johnson.  James  Boswell  (174095)  was  a 
Scotch  lawyer,  whose  name  lives  to  the  present  day  because  of 
his  famous  “Biography  of  Samuel  Johnson/*  published  in  1791. 


NOTES 


419 

42:9.  Beloit  College.  A  coeducational,  nonsectarian  insti¬ 
tution  in  Beloit,  Wis.,  directly  north  of  Rockford,  Ill. 

42:13.  Bellerophon  .  .  .fight  with  Minotaur.  In  Greek 
mythology,  Bellerophon  was  the  conqueror,  not  of  the 
Minotaur,  but  of  the  Chimerae,  the  monsters  symbolizing 
storms  and  other  destructive  natural  forces.  Theseus,  with 
the  help  of  Ariadne,  slew  the  Minotaur. 

42:16.  Pegasus.  The  famous  winged  horse  which  sprang 
from  the  head  of  the  gorgon  Medusa  when  she  was  slain  by 
Perseus.  Mounted  on  Pegasus,  Bellerophon  slew  the  Chi¬ 
merae,  but  he  tried  to  fly  heavenward,  the  horse  threw 

him. 

43:5.  Plutarch  hero.  The  celebrity  of  Plutarch  (46-120 
a.d.)  is  founded  on  his  forty-six  “Parallel  Lives,”  in  which  he 
gives  in  pairs  the  biographies  of  famous  Greek  and  Roman 
statesmen,  orators,  and  warriors.  Thus  Lycurgus  is  paired 
with  Numa,  Theseus  with  Romulus,  and  Alexander  with 
Julius  Caesar. 

43:19.  Saxon  word  for  lady.  AS  Hlcefdige,  later  hlcefdie , 
a  compound  of  hlcef,  loaf,  bread,  and  dige ,  connected  with 
dcegee ,  a  kneader,  from  the  root  of  dah ,  dough.  The  whole 
pictures  the  original  “Lady  of  the  manor,”  who  doled  out 
bread  to  her  husband’s  dependents. 

46:6.  Grandfatherly  relation.  Bronson  Alcott  was  the 
father  of  Louisa  May  Alcott,  author  of  “Little  Women,”  which 
was  eagerly  read  by  the  girls  of  Miss  Addams’s  day. 

46:16.  Port  Royalists.  The  convent  of  Port-Royal-des- 
Champs  near  Versailles  was  long  a  retreat  for  lay  persons 
who  desired  to  lead  a  life  of  solitude  without  taking  vows. 
Some  of  the  most  distinguished  scholars  of  the  time  lived 
there,  devoting  their  time  to  prayer,  spiritual  reading,  in¬ 
struction,  and  manual  labor.  Coming  into  conflict  with  the 
Catholic  Church  because  of  too  liberal  views  during  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  order  was  dispersed. 


420 


NOTES 


46:28.  Homer.  The  great  Greek  epic  poet,  who  probably 
lived  in  the  ninth  or  tenth  century  B.c.  His  great  works  are 
the  “Iliad,”  dealing  with  the  Trojan  War,  and  the  “Odyssey,” 
.which  tells  of  the  wanderings  of  Ulysses  and  his  companions 
following  the  fall  of  Troy. 

48:19.  Plato.  A  great  Athenian  philosopher  (427-347  b.c. ). 
In  his  writings,  two  great  forces  are  persistent:  the  love  of 
truth  and  the  zeal  for  human  improvement.  His  two  im¬ 
portant  works  are  his  “Dialogues”  and  the  “Republic.” 

48:26.  Jowett’s  translation.  See  41  7. 

49:20.  Leipsic.  The  University  of  Leipsic  was  at  that  time 
the  third  largest  of  the  German  universities. 

50:26.  William  Jennings  Bryan.  A  well-known  political 
leader. 

51 :6.  Athens  of  Illinois.  Since  Athens  was  the  center  of 
Greek  culture,  places  containing  centers  of  learning  have 
been  fond  of  calling  themselves  the  “Athens”  of  their  par¬ 
ticular  region.  In  this  case  the  reference  is  to  Jacksonville, 
because  of  the  number  of  educational  institutions  located 
there. 

51:17.  Field  of  Waterloo.  Field  of  defeat.  An  allusion  to 
Napoleon’s  decisive  defeat  at  Waterloo  in  June,  1815,  which 
closed  his  long  victorious  career  as  master  of  Europe. 

53  :io.  Sombart  and  Loria.  Werner  Sombart  (1863 — )  is  a 
German  political  economist.  Achille  Loria  (1857 — )  is  an 
Italian  economist  of  the  school  which  explains  history  in  the 
light  of  economic  conditions.  He  is  in  sympathy  with  the 
Socialists,  but  unlike  them,  believes  that  natural  forces  will 
eventually  give  the  laborer  his  just  reward. 

55:17.  Maeterlinck.  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  a  Belgian 
poet,  essayist,  and  dramatist,  was  born  in  1862.  His  writings 
are  characterized  by  a  dreamy  symbolism,  of  which  “The 
Blue  Bird”  (1909)  is  an  excellent  example.  He  was  awarded 
the  Nobel  prize  in  literature  in  1911. 


NOTES 


421 


56  :io.  Cassandra.  Daughter  of  Priam  and  Hecuba  of 
Troy,  beloved  of  Apollo  and  gifted  by  him  with  the  power  of 
prophecy.  After  receiving  the  gift,  she  laughed  at  his  love, 
and  in  revenge  he  decreed  that  her  prophecies  should  always 
be  discredited.  The  term  “Cassandra-like”  is  applied  to 
warnings  which  are  true  but  not  heeded. 

57:10.  Darwin’s  “Origin  of  Species.”  The  full  title  of  the 
book,  published  by  Charles  Darwin  (1869-92)  in  1859,  is 
“On  the  Origin  of  Species  by  Means  of  Natural  Selection,  or 
the  Preservation  of  Favored  Races  in  the  Struggle  of  Life.” 
The  book  brought  the  author  into  conflict  with  the  Church, 
since  it  contradicted  the  special-creation  hypothesis.  “The 
Descent  of  Man,  and  Selection  With  Relation  to  Sex,”  ap¬ 
pearing  in  1871,  brought  Darwin  into  fuller  conflict  with 
those  who  interpreted  the  Bible  narrowly  and  literally,  since 
“The  Descent  of  Man”  taught  that  the  mind  of  man  was 
essentially  an  animal  mind,  which  had  progressed  through 
the  ages  through  natural  causes. 

57:13.  Butler’s  “Analogy.”  Published  in  1736  by  Joseph 
Butler  (1692-1752),  an  English  theologian.  The  full  title  is 
“The  Analogy  of  Religion,  Natural  and  Revealed,  to  the 
Constitution  and  Course  of  Nature.”  The  leading  aim  of  the 
book  is  “to  show  that  all  the  objections  to  revealed  religion 
are  equally  applicable  to  the  whole  constitution  of  nature, 
and  that  the  general  analogy  between  the  principles  of 
divine  government,  as  revealed  in  the  Scriptures,  and  those 
manifested  in  the  course  of  nature  warrants  the  belief  that 
they  have  one  author.”  Naturally,  a  firm  believer  in  the 
“Analogy”  would  not  be  among  the  first  to  embrace  Dar¬ 
winism! 

60:12.  Gray’s  “Anatomy.”  A  standard  work  on  descriptive 
and  surgical  anatomy,  published  in  1858  by  Henry  Gray, 
Fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons  and  lecturer  on 
anatomy  at  St.  George’s  Hospital  Medical  School,  London. 


422 


NOTES 


This  sentence  states  Miss  Addams’s  sense  of  relief  at  having 
escaped  from  the  drudgery  of  the  medical  course  for  which 
she  had  found  herself  unsuited. 

62:2.  East  End.  That  part  of  London  lying  east  of  “the 
City,”  or  great  commercial  heart  of  London.  Roughly,  the 
“East  End”  comprises  the  boroughs  of  Stepney,  Poplar, 
Shoreditch,  and  Bethnal  Green.  It  is  here  that  the  prob¬ 
lems  attaching  to  London’s  poor  were  primarily  worked 
out. 

62:7.  Mile  End  Road.  The  name  applied  to  the  northern 
of  the  two  main  roads  entering  London  from  the  east.  Enter¬ 
ing  at  Stratford,  the  road  is  successively  known  as  Bow  Road, 
Mile  End  Road,  Whitechapel  Road,  and  High  Street.  Natur¬ 
ally,  it  traverses  the  poorest  districts  of  London. 

64:17.  Pall  Mall  Gazette  Exposure.  The  Pall  Mall 
Gazette ,  a  famous  London  newspaper,  then  under  the  editor¬ 
ship  of  W.  T.  Stead,  published  in  1889  a  series  of  articles 
called  The  Maiden  Tribute  of  Modern  Babylon.  While  the 
articles  brought  Mr.  Stead’s  editorship  to  an  end,  they  had 
the  effect  of  arousing  a  wave  of  indignation  at  the  revelation 
given  of  the  horrors  of  the  “white  slave  traffic”  among  women 
and  girls  in  London’s  poorer  districts. 

66:6.  “Weltschmerz.”  Literally  zvorld-sorrozv.  Grief 
over  existing  conditions. 

66:23.  Pensions.  A  continental  term  for  boarding  houses , 
derived  from  the  French  pension,  money  paid  for  board. 

67:2.  Hausfrau.  Housewife. 

69 117.  “Life  of  Prince  Albert.”  Albert,  consort  of  Queen 
Victoria  of  England,  was  a  prince  of  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 
a  German  state  comprising  the  duchy  of  Saxe-Coburg,  bor¬ 
dering  Bavaria,  and  Gotha,  bordering  Prussia.  Albert  owed 
much  of  the  qualities  that  endeared  him  to  the  English 
people  to  the  wise  training  of  his  tutor,  Baron  Stockmar, 
mentioned  in  the  following  line. 


NOTES 


423 


69:24.  Dresden.  The  capital  of  the  former  kingdom  of 
Saxony.  It  is  famous  for  its  picture  gallery,  which  is  especially 
rich  in  works  of  the  Italian,  Flemish,  and  Dutch  painters. 

70:2.  Albrecht  Diirer.  (1471-1528.)  A  German  painter, 
engraver,  and  designer,  the  most  prominent  and  influential 
master  of  the  German  Renaissance.  His  work  varied  from 
simple  portraits  to  wonderfully  executed  altar  pieces,  and 
great  series  of  wood  cuts,  such  as  the  “Apocalypse”  series  of 
sixteen  blocks,  published  in  1498,  the  fourth  block,  “The 
Four  Riders  of  the  Apocalypse,”  probably  being  the  greatest. 
“The  Triumphal  Arch  of  Maximilian,”  published  after  r5i2, 
was  composed  of  ninety  plates,  so  engraved  as  to  form  a 
triumphal  arch  ten  feet  high. 

70:11.  Reformation  and  peasants’ wars.  The  Reformation 
was  the  name  applied  to  the  great  revolution  which  took 
place  in  the  sixteenth  century  against  certain  doctrines  and 
practices  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Although  primarily 
a  religious  revolution,  which  attacked  the  universal  suprem¬ 
acy  of  the  Pope,  it  was  accompanied  by  political  and  social 
changes,  one  of  which  was  the  peasants’  war.  The  German 
peasants  of  Luther’s  day  were  in  a  more  deplorable  state 
than  those  of  France  and  England.  When  in  1525  the  new 
religious  doctrines  were  spread  among  them,  accompanied  by 
new  ideas  of  property  rights,  the  peasants  rose  in  revolt  and 
inflicted  upon  their  late  masters  much  the  same  cruelties  as 
those  recently  inflicted  by  the  Russian  peasants  when  they 
overthrew  the  Romanoff  rule.  Luther  at  first  sympathized 
with  the  peasants,  but  as  their  excesses  grew,  he  feared  for 
his  reforms  to  be  associated  with  anarchy  and  urged  that 
the  rebels  be  put  down  with  the  sword.  The  revolt  was  stamp¬ 
ed  out  without  any  apparent  improvement  for  the  peasantry. 

71:6.  Roman  Campagna.  The  name  applied  to  the  low, 
unhealthful  plain  of  Italy  surrounding  Rome.  In  recent  years, 
drainage  and  the  planting  of  trees  by  the  Italian  Government 


424  NOTES 

have  done  much  to  reclaim  the  district  and  make  it  more 
healthful. 

71  :j.  Porta  del  Popolo.  A  gate  replacing  the  Porta 
Flaminia,  one  of  the  fourteen  gates  in  the  Aurelian  Wall, 
built  271-80  a.d.  as  a  protection  against  sudden  attacks 
from  the  Germans  and  other  northern  tribes.  It  is  on  the 
Via  Flaminia,  the  northwest  entrance  through  the  Aurelian 
Wall  into  Rome. 

71:13.  Ecco  Roma.  “ Behold  Rome.” 

71:19.  Catacombs.  Subterranean  vaults  used  as  burial 
places  for  the  dead.  The  Roman  Catacombs,  about  sixty  in 
number,  are  the  best  known  in  the  world.  During  the  perse¬ 
cution  of  the  Christians  in  the  first  four  centuries  following 
Christ,  the  Catacombs  were  also  used  as  places  of  refuge  and 
for  secret  religious  worship.  Because  of  their  religious  asso¬ 
ciations  and  the  frescoes  and  carvings  with  which  they  are 
decorated,  the  Roman  Catacombs  have  always  been  places 
of  interest  to  visitors. 

72:1.  Lanciani.  Rodolfo  Amedo  Lanciani  (1847 — )  is  an 
Italian  archeologist,  who  has  been  in  the  service  of  the  Italian 
Government  since  1870  and  who  has  directed  most  of  the 
famous  excavations  of  the  last  half  century.  He  became  well 
known  in  the  United  States  through  his  books  dealing  with 
monuments  and  excavations  of  ancient  Rome  and  through 
his  lecture  tour  of  America,  1886-7. 

72:3.  Johns  Hopkins.  A  university  in  Baltimore,  Md., 
founded  in  1867  by  Johns  Hopkins,  who  bequeathed  #7,000,000 
to  found  a  university  and  hospital.  The  Johns  Hopkins 
Hospital  was  opened  in  1889,  and  the  work  of  the  Johns 
Hopkins  Medical  School  inaugurated  in  1893.  The  school  is 
noted  for  thoroughness  and  for  the  advanced  type  of  re¬ 
search  work  carried  on  there. 

75:26.  Phossy  jaw.  A  chronic  form  of  poisoning  occurring 
in  the  manufacture  of  phosphorus  matches. 


NOTES 


425 

76:7.  Wells.  H.  G.  Wells  (1866 — )  is  an  English  novelist 
of  strongly  marked  socialistic  tendencies.  Beginning  his 
literary  career  with  books  of  scientific  and  sociological  forecast 
of  the  Jules  Verne  type,  such  as  “The  War  of  the  Worlds,” 
(1898)  in  which  our  planet  is  invaded  by  monstrous  creatures 
from  Mars,  he  had  progressed  to  discussion  of  purely  social¬ 
istic  questions,  such  as  “The  Future  in  America,’'  in  1906,  and 
“New  Worlds  for  Old,”  in  1908,  an  account  of  socialism. 

76:18.  Positivists.  A  school  of  philosophers  who  adopted 
their  name  from  August  Comte’s  term,  which  purported  to 
exclude  all  theorizing  and  confine  itself  to  “positive”  scientific 
knowledge  of  facts.  In  England,  positivism  has  attempted  to 
institutionalize  itself  by  the  establishment  of  a  church,  with 
ritual,  ceremonials,  and  the  like,  all  in  the  worship  of  Human¬ 
ity.  Frederic  Harrison  (1831 — )  was  president  of  the  English 
Positivist  Committee  from  1880  to  1905. 

76:27.  Stonehenge.  A  celebrated  stone  circle,  the  ruins  of 
which  stand  on  Salisbury  Plain  in  southern  England.  It  is 
probably  a  relic  of  the  ancient  Druids,  dating  back  to  the 
Bronze  Age. 

76:27.  Acropolis.  An  acropolis  in  ancient  Greece  was  a 
fortified  natural  eminence,  usually  containing  the  palace  of 
the  chief.  When  defended  by  a  wall,  it  usually  lost  its  military 
character  and  was  given  over  to  temples.  The  Acropolis  of 
Athens  was  the  religious  center  of  the  city,  crowned  with 
temples  and  shrines. 

76:28.  Sistine  Chapel.  The  private  chapel  of  the  Pope  in 
the  palace  of  the  Vatican,  Rome.  It  was  built  in  1473  and 
contains  beautiful  examples  of  the  marble  decorations  of  the 
early  Renaissance.  The  walls  and  ceilings  are  richly  frescoed. 

77:1.  Winchester.  A  famous  British  cathedral,  built  in 
1070  on  the  site  of  a  church  built  in  166;  destroyed  in  266; 
restored  in  293  and  converted  into  a  temple  to  Wodin;  de¬ 
stroyed  in  635  to  make  room  for  the  ancient  cathedral,  in 


NOTES 


426 

which  were  buried  the  Saxon  kings  of  Wessex.  The  present 
cathedral  is  a  beautiful  type  of  Norman  architecture  and 
contains  the  tombs  of  Edmund,  son  of  King  Alfred,  and  of 
William  Rufus  (1056-1100). 

77:1.  Notre  Dame.  A  celebrated  church  in  Paris,  dedicated 
to  the  Virgin  Mary.  It  was  begun  in  1163  by  Bishop  Maurice 
de  Sully,  and  its  construction  was  carried  on  through  several 
centuries.  All  through  the  succeeding  centuries,  Notre  Dame 
de  Paris  (Our  Lady  of  Paris)  has  been  the  scene  of  the  most 
important  ceremonies  of  church  and  state  in  France. 

77:2.  Amiens.  The  largest  cathedral  in  France  and  one  of 
the  finest  specimens  of  Gothic  architecture  in  Europe.  It 
was  begun  in  1220  and  finished  in  1288,  but  numerous  addi¬ 
tions  have  since  been  made. 

77:3.  Ulm.  A  city  in  Wiirtemburg,  Germany.  The  Minster, 
a  Protestant  church,  is  the  most  important  and  beautiful 
example  of  Gothic  architecture  in  Germany,  and  next  to 
the  Cologne  Cathedral  the  largest  church  in  that  country. 

77:14.  Luther.  .  .affixed  his  thesis.  Martin  Luther  (1483- 
1546)  wras  a  German  monk,  who,  becoming  convinced  of 
abuses  within  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  particularly  in 
regard  to  the  open  sale  by  agents  of  the  Pope  of  indulgences , 
which  included  the  remission  of  temporal  punishment  for 
the  committing  of  sin  as  well  as  remission  of  pains  of  purgatory 
after  death,  nailed  to  the  church  door  at  Wittenberg,  October 
31,  1517,  ninety-five  theses  calling  into  question  the  value  of 
indulgences  and  the  practices  of  the  agents  employed  to  sell 
them.  From  this  grew  the  great  Protestant  Reformation. 
(See  70:1 1.) 

77:27.  Comte.  Auguste  Comte  (1798-1857)  was  a  cele¬ 
brated  French  philosopher,  the  founder  of  what  is  known  as 
the  Positivist  school  of  philosophy.  (See  76:18.) 

78:12.  Riviera.  The  popular  name  for  the  beautiful  coast 
line  of  Italy  and  southern  France,  particularly  around  the 


NOTES 


427 

Gulf  of  Genoa.  Thousands  are  attracted  here  each  winter  by 
the  mild  climate  to  the  famous  resorts  of  Cannes,  Nice, 
Mentone,  Monte  Carlo,  and  San  Remo. 

78:16.  Deaconess’s  Training  School.  An  institution  sanc¬ 
tioned  by  the  Episcopal,  the  Methodist  Episcopal,  the  Lu¬ 
theran,  and  the  Presbyterian  churches  for  the  instruction 
and  training  of  women  in  church  and  charitable  work.  It  is 
similar  to  the  Catholic  sisterhoods,  except  that  the  members 
take  no  vows  and  are  bound  to  no  terms  of  service. 

80:23.  Raison  d’etre.  Literally  reason  for  being ;  in  other 
words,  an  excuse. 

81  :g.  Miss  Starr.  Ellen  Gates  Starr,  Miss  Addams’s  de¬ 
voted  friend  and  fellow  worker,  joint  founder  of  Hull-House. 
Miss  Starr  has  taken  an  intense  interest  in  the  labor  move¬ 
ment,  especially  as  it  affected  women  workers,  and  was  ar¬ 
rested  for  protesting  against  the  arrest  of  girl  pickets  in  the 
Waitresses’  strike  in  Chicago,  March  2,  1914.  She  was 
acquitted,  thus  vindicating  the  right  of  free  speech.  She  was 
made  an  honorary  member  of  the  Clothing  Workers’  Union 
for  valuable  services  in  their  strike  in  1915-16. 

81:28.  People’s  Palace.  See  110:13. 

82:3.  Canon  Fremantle.  William  Henry  Fremantle,  born 
in  1831,  is  a  distinguished  English  clergyman,  who  was  Can¬ 
on  of  Canterbury  in  1882  and  Dean  of  Ripon  in  1895.  He 
was  Bampton  lecturer  at  Oxford  in  1883,  his  lectures  being 
published  in  1885  under  the  title,  “The  World  on  the  Subject 
of  Redemption.’’ 

82:14.  Tolstoy’s  phrase.  Count  Leo  Tolstoy  (1828-1910) 
was  a  famous  Russian  novelist  whose  writings  and  life  had  a 
profound  influence  on  the  thought  of  the  last  half  of  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century.  Born  of  the  aristocratic  class  and  inheriting 
great  estates,  he  became  in  his  later  life  so  impressed  with  the 
salutary  influence  of  labor  that  he  gave  up  most  of  his  estate 
to  the  peasants  and  lived  and  worked  among  them. 


NOTES 


428 

83:11.  Professor  Swing.  David  Swing  (183094)  was  an 
American  minister,  at  one  time  pastor  of  the  Fourth  Presby¬ 
terian  Church  in  Chicago.  He  was  tried  for  heresy  because 
of  his  liberal  views  in  1874  but  was  acquitted.  However,  he 
withdrew  and  organized  a  new  church,  meeting  first  in  a 
theater,  later  in  Central  Music  Hall.  Part  of  his  congre¬ 
gation  followed,  and  he  preached  to  the  largest  crowds  in 
Chicago. 

83:14.  Mrs.  Wilmarth.  A  Chicago  philanthropist  who  was 
a  devoted  friend  and  supporter  of  Hull-House.  Before  the 
House  was  opened,  she  gave  a  reception  at  her  home  to 
introduce  Miss  Addams  and  Miss  Starr  to  people  in  Chicago 
who  might  be  interested  in  the  project.  She  died  in  August 
1920. 

83:16.  Thomas  Davidson.  (1840-1900.)  An  American 
philosopher,  born  in  Scotland  and  educated  at  the  Univer¬ 
sity  of  Aberdeen,  who  came  to  the  United  States  in  1867, 
settling  at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  in  1875  where  he  was  active 
as  a  scholar,  author,  and  lecturer.  For  many  years  he  con¬ 
ducted  a  “summer  school  of  culture”  in  the  Adirondacks 
and  from  1898  a  class  of  Russian  Jews  in  New  York  City. 

83:17.  Fabian  society.  An  organization  for  the  advance¬ 
ment  of  socialism.  It  takes  its  name  from  the  Roman  general 
Fabius,  who  by  his  policy  of  delay  saved  the  state.  This 
society  seeks  to  improve  social  conditions  by  trying  to  better 
existing  conditions  instead  of  by  revolutionary  attempts. 
The  movement  was  begun  in  London  in  1883  when  an  Ameri¬ 
can,  Thomas  Davidson,  who  happened  to  be  in  London,  held 
parlor  conferences,  with  a  group  of  literary  workers  chiefly, 
on  the  social  duties  of  the  times.  Since  1888,  the  society  has 
held  public  meetings  and  carries  an  on  active  propaganda 
for  government  ownership  of  land  and  “such  industries  as 
can  be  managed  conveniently.”  It  seeks  to  abolish  the 
“idle  class”  and  to  give  equality  of  opportunity  to  all. 


NOTES 


429 


85:24.  Koerner’s  poems.  Karl  Theodor  Koerner  (more 
commonly  Korner )  was  a  young  German  poet  and  patriot, 
born  in  1791.  He  was  killed  in  guerilla  warfare  against  Napo¬ 
leon  in  1813.  His  fiery  patriotic  songs,  written  to  encourage 
his  fellow  fighters  to  repel  the  invader,  have  remained  popular 
among  his  countrymen. 

86  :22.  Colonel  Mason.  Roswell  B.  Mason,  mayor  of 
Chicago  in  1869. 

87:25.  Miss  Helen  Culver.  (1832 — .)  A  teacher  and 
philanthropist,  born  at  Little  Valley,  N.  Y.  In  1853,  she 
established  a  private  school  at  Sycamore,  Ill.  She  was  a 
teacher  in  the  Chicago  schools,  1854-61,  and  matron  of  a 
military  hospital  at  Murfreesboro,  Tenn.,  in  1863.  She 
entered  the  real  estate  business  with  a  relative,  Charles  J. 
Hull,  in  1868.  After  Mr.  Hull’s  death,  she  built  and  endowed 
the  four  Hull  biological  laboratories  for  the  University  of 
Chicago,  1895.  She  has  been  trustee  for  the  Hull-House 
Association  since  its  foundation  in  1895. 

93:2.  “Romola.”  A  story  of  Florentine  life  in  the  fifteenth 
century.  The  monk  Savonarola  plays  an  important  part. 

93:17.  Brook  Farm  .  .  .  the  Ripleys.  Brook  Farm  was  a 
community  organized  in  1841  by  George  Ripley  and  his  wife 
as  an  experiment  in  cooperative  living.  A  farm  of  200  acres 
was  purchased.  Each  member  had  to  do  some  share  of  the 
work,  the  rate  of  pay  being  the  same  for  all  kinds  of  work, 
and  all  having  a  share  in  the  social  and  educational  enjoy¬ 
ments.  Among  the  prominent  persons  connected  with  Brook 
Farm  were  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  Charles  A.  Dana,  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  Bronson  Alcott,  Theodore  Parker,  George 
W.  Curtis,  and  Margaret  Fuller.  Hawthorne’s  “Blithedale 
Romance”  was  written  out  of  his  experiences  here.  The  asso¬ 
ciation  came  to  an  end  in  1847,  “plain  living  and  high  think¬ 
ing”  having  failed  to  hold  the  group  of  intellectuals  to  their 
self-imposed  tasks. 


NOTES 


430 

(See  Codman’s  “Brook  Farm,  Historic  and  Personal  Mem¬ 
oirs”;  Frothingham’s  “Life  of  George  Ripley”;  and  Swift’s 
“Brook  Farm,  Its  Members,  Scholars,  and  Visitors.”) 

93:24.  The  charming  young  girl  was  Miss  Jennie  Dow. 
Her  kindergarten  was  the  first  organized  activity  of  Hull- 
House.  She  remained  only  one  year,  later  becoming  Mrs. 
William  Harvey.  She  died  in  1904. 

96:1.  Prince  Roland.  According  to  tradition,  Roland  was 
the  nephew  of  Charlemagne  and  prefect  of  Brittany.  He  was 
the  hero  of  the  “Chanson  de  Roland,”  a  famous  eleventh- 
century  epic  poem,  and  figured  in  many  tales  of  knightly 
daring. 

98:19.  Gaelic.  The  language  of  the  Highland  Scotch. 
Also  loosely  applied  to  any  of  the  Celtic  tongues,  including 
Irish  and  Manx. 

102:24.  CanonBarnett.  Samuel  Augustus  Barnett(i844 — ), 
an  English  clergyman,  who  was  the  first  warden  of  Toynbee 
Hall  in  1884.  His  book,  “Practical  Socialism,”  appeared  in  1893. 

104:17.  Robert  A.  Woods.  An  American  settlement  worker 
born  in  Pittsburgh,  Pa.,  in  1865.  He  received  his  A.  B.  at 
Amherst  in  1886  and  was  in  residence  for  six  months  at 
Toynbee  Hall  (see  37:25)  in  1890.  Since  1911,  he  has  been 
secretary  of  the  National  Federation  of  Settlements.  His 
published  works  include  “English  Social  Movements,”  1891; 
“Americans  in  Process,”  1902.  He  has  contributed  many 
articles  to  the  current  magazines. 

105:2.  Miss  Vida  D.  Scudder.  Miss  Scudder,  who  was 
born  in  India  in  1861,  was  graduated  from  Smith  College  in 
1884,  receiving  her  A.M.  in  1889.  She  was  connected  with 
the  beginnings  of  the  college  settlement  movement  in  Amer¬ 
ica.  She  is  at  present  professor  of  literature  at  Wellesley 
College,  is  the  author  of  several  books,  chiefly  on  literary 
subjects,  and  has  edited  numerous  college  and  high  school 
classics. 


NOTES 


43i 


105:2.  Miss  Helena  Dudley.  An  American  settle¬ 
ment  worker,  born  in  Nebraska  in  1853.  She  was  educated 
at  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology  and  at 
Bryn  Mawr.  In  1892-3,  she  was  head  worker  in  a  college 
settlement  in  Philadelphia.  From  1893  to  1912,  she  was 
head  worker  in  the  Denison  House  College  Settlement, 
Boston. 

108:26.  Locke  and  Pestalozzi.  John  Locke  (1632-1704) 
was  an  English  philosopher,  whose  fame  rests  largely  on  his 
“Essay  Concerning  Hyman  Understanding,”  published  in  1687 
after  seventeen  years  of  labor.  The  essay  marks  an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  philosophy.  Johann  Heinrich  Pestalozzi 
(1746-1827)  was  a  Swiss  reformer  and  chief  founder  of 
modern  pedagogy.  He  conceived  the  idea  of  combining  learn¬ 
ing  with  handwork  and  centering  it  upon  objects  of  the  child’s 
immediate  environment.  Pestalozzi  was  the  founder  of  the 
first  “normal  school”  for  training  teachers  in  “methods  in 
accordance  with  nature.”  The  great  American  normal  school 
movement  grew  out  of  his  work.  He  himself  said  his  great 
effort  was  “to  psychologize  education.” 

110:13.  Walter  Besant.  An  English  novelist  and  critic, 
who  in  1882  wrote  “All  Sorts  and  Conditions  of  Men,”  dealing 
with  social  conditions  in  the  East  Side  of  London.  The  work 
gave  such  a  clear  picture  of  the  sordid  life  and  limited  oppor¬ 
tunities  of  the  common  people  of  East  London  that  it  led  to 
the  establishment  of  the  People’s  Palace  and  gave  impetus 
to  many  other  attempts  at  social  reforms.  The  People’s 
Palace,  which  was  established  at  Mile  End  in  1887,  is  intended 
to  furnish  the  people  of  East  London  with  educational  and 
recreational  facilities.  The  original  fund  was  established  in 
1840  by  John  Beaumont.  A  quarter  of  a  million,  raised  by 
Sir  Edward  Hay  Currie,  was  added  later.  Besant’s  Palace 
of  Delight  in  “All  Sorts  and  Conditions  of  Men”  suggested  a 
name  and  created  a  wider  interest  in  the  work.  The  institution 


NOTES 


432 

offers  the  same  sort  of  advantages,  educational  and  recreation¬ 
al,  as  Hull-House,  only  on  a  larger  scale. 

126:6.  University.  .  .righteousness  of  whose  foundation 
they  challenged.  John  D.  Rockefeller,  Standard  Oil  magnate, 
contributed  the  larger  part  of  the  original  endowment  fund 
and  has  since  added  gifts  totaling  $10,500,000  more.  Since 
the  Standard  Oil  Company  was  a  trust,  Mr.  Rockefeller’s 
money  was  said  to  be  “tainted,”  because  it  had  been  obtained 
by  crushing  small  competitors  and  driving  them  out  of 
business. 

127:4.  Washington  Gladden.  An  American  author  and 
clergyman  (1836-1918),  widely  known  as  a  writer  on  social 
reforms.  Among  his  published  works  are:  “Workingmen  and 
Their  Employers,”  1876;  “Applied  Christianity,”  1887;  “Tools 
and  the  Man,”  1893;  “Social  Facts  and  Forces,”  1897. 

127:23.  Henry  D.  Lloyd.  An  American  lecturer  and 
writer  (1847-1903)  with  the  Chicago  Tribune  from  1872  to 
1885.  He  was  secretary  of  the  American  Free  Trade  League. 
His  published  works  include  “The  Strike  of  Millionaires 
Against  Miners,”  1890,  based  on  the  Spring  Valley  (Ill.)  coal 
strike  of  1889;  “Wealth  Against  Commonwealth,”  1894;  “A 
Country  Without  Strikes:  New  Zealand,”  1900. 

128:19.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett.  An  Irish  statesman,  born  in 
1854.  He  was  educated  at  Eton  and  Oxford  and  lived  on  a 
Montana  ranch,  1879-89.  He  has  worked  untiringly  for  a  free 
but  united  Ireland  and  striven  in  every  way  to  aid  the  Irish 
peasant  to  better  his  condition.  He  recently  visited  America 
to  study  agricultural  methods  here. 

128:26.  Paris  Exposition.  A  great  “world’s  fair”  held  at 
Paris  in  1900. 

129:9.  Robert  Owen.  An  English  social  reformer  (1 771- 
1858),  born  in  Wales.  He  was  a  wealthy  mill  owner,  who  came 
to  believe  mills  should  be  operated  for  the  benefit  of  the 
workers  and  the  community  at  large.  He  set  up  two  social 


NOTES 


433 

communities  on  his  own  plan:  one  at  Orbiston  in  Lanark¬ 
shire  and  the  other  at  New  Harmony,  Ind.  Both  were 
failures.  Owen  is  regarded  as  one  of  the  founders  of  English 
socialism. 

138  :20.  Crown  prince  of  Belgium.  The  present  King 
Albert. 

145:13.  World’s  Fair.  The  World’s  Columbian  Exposition, 
held  at  Jackson  Park,  Chicago,  in  1893,  was  intended  to 
commemorate  the  four-hundredth  anniversary  of  the  discovery 
of  America  by  Columbus.  The  “Panic  of  ’93”  struck  the 
country  at  about  that  time  and  strikes  abounded.  Conditions 
all  over  the  country  were  very  bad,  and  lack  of  employment 
intensified  the  suffering  among  the  poor. 

145  :2i.  Trafalgar  Square.  A  London  square  named  from 
the  Battle  of  Trafalgar,  fought  between  the  British  fleet 
under  Lord  Nelson  and  the  combined  fleets  of  France  and 
Spain,  October  21,  1805.  The  English  won,  Napoleon’s  sea 
power  was  shattered,  but  Nelson  lost  his  life.  The  square 
contains  an  imposing  granite  column  in  memory  of  Nelson. 
Many  public  buildings  center  about  the  square,  which  is  a 
favorite  spot  for  mass  meetings. 

145  :22.  Mr.  Stead.  W.  T.  Stead  (1849-1912)  was  a  British 
writer  and  social  reformer,  best  known  as  editor  of  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette.  His  visit  to  America  in  1893  resulted  in  the 
book  “If  Christ  Came  to  Chicago,”  which  laid  bare  unspeakable 
conditions  among  the  poor  of  Chicago,  similar  to  his  Maiden 
Tribute  of  Modern  Babylon  (See  64:17),  with  its  terrible 
indictment  of  London.  Mr.  Stead  died  in  the  sinking  of  the 
great  ocean  liner,  the  Titanic. 

149:1.  Charles  Booth.  An  English  statistician  and  writer 
on  social  questions,  born  in  1840.  His  “Life  and  Labor  of  the 
People  of  London,”  in  ten  volumes,  1891-1903,  a  storehouse  of 
accurate  social  facts  dealing  chiefly  with  the  people  of  East 
London,  won  him  world-wide  attention.  He  has  taken  an 


NOTES 


434 

active  part  in  the  move  resulting  in  the  English  Old  Age 
Pension  Laws  and  has  written  a  number  of  books  on  this 
subject. 

160:26.  “this  ribbon  to  stick  in  her  coat.”  See  Browning’s 

The  Lost  Leader: 

“Just  for  a  handful  of  silver  he  left  us — 

Just  for  a  riband  to  stick  in  his  coat.” 

Miss  Addams  uses  the  phrase  to  indicate  how  the  old  woman, 
though  receiving  no  financial  returns  from  her  inventions, 
could  still  flaunt  the  favorable  opinions  of  the  experts  in 
the  faces  of  her  neighbors. 

162:18.  Haymarket  Riot.  When  the  Chicago  police 
attempted  to  break  up  a  meeting  of  anarchists  in  Haymarket 
Square,  Randolph  Street,  May  4,  1886,  a  bomb,  thrown  by 
an  unidentified  member,  killed  seven  policemen  and  wounded 
twenty-seven.  The  actual  bomb  thrower  was  never  caught, 
but  August  Spies,  Adolph  Fischer,  George  Engel,  and  Albert 
Parsons  were  hanged  as  accomplices  November  11,  1887. 
Louis  Ling,  sentenced  to  death,  committed  suicide  in  prison. 
Samuel  Fielden  and  Michael  Schwab,  sentenced  for  life,  and 
Oscar  Neebe,  for  fifteen  years,  were  pardoned  by  Governor 
Altgeld. 

163:6.  Lyman  Gage.  An  American  financier,  who  was 
born  in  De  Ruyter,  N.  Y.,  in  1836  and  came  to  Chicago  in 
1855.  He  was  connected  with  various  bank  and  trust  com¬ 
panies  and  served  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  under  both 
McKinley  and  Roosevelt,  1897-1902.  He  was  president  of  the 
board  of  directors  of  the  Chicago  World’s  Fair  and  twice 
president  of  the  Civic  Federation  of  Chicago. 

165:27.  Henry  George.  An  American  economist  (1839-97) 
born  in  Philadelphia.  He  learned  the  printer’s  trade  in  Mel¬ 
bourne,  Australia,  where  he  had  worked  his  wa}^  on  a  sailing 
vessel.  Returning  to  San  Francisco,  he  became  a  newspaper 
writer  there.  The  great  fortunes  acquired  in  California 


NOTES 


435 

through  the  rapid  increase  in  land  values  fixed  his  attention 
on  the  land  problem  and  caused  him  to  formulate  the  theory, 
later  worked  out  in  “Our  Land  Policy,”  1871,  and  “Progress 
and  Poverty,”  1879;  namely,  that  the  value  of  land  represents 
a  monopoly  power,  and  that  the  entire  burden  of  taxation 
should  be  levied  on  it,  thus  freeing  industry  from  taxation 
and  equalizing  opportunity  by  destroying  monopolistic  ad¬ 
vantage.  Out  of  this  grew  his  “Single  Tax  Theory,”  ardently 
advocated  by  his  followers  to  the  present  day. 

166:4.  Father  Huntington.  Frederick  Dan  Huntington 
(1819-1904),  an  American  clergyman  and  writer,  was  the 
first  Episcopal  bishop  of  Central  New  York.  His  published 
works  include  “Lectures  on  Human  Society,”  i860,  and  “The 
Golden  Rule  Applied  to  Business  and  Social  Life,”  1892. 

167  :i2.  Schopenhauer.  Arthur  Schopenhauer  (1788-1860) 
was  a  German  philosopher  whose  writings  are  characterized 
by  cynicism  and  a  very  low  estimate  of  the  average  human 
being  and  particularly  of  woman.  To  him,  the  welfare  of 
society  was  a  subordinate  aim,  never  to  be  allowed  to  dwarf 
the  individual’s  aim  of  the  full  realization  of  an  ideal  being. 
His  philosophy  was  therefore  a  selfish  one,  seeking  individual 
happiness  no  matter  what  the  cost  to  society.  Among  his 
works  are  “The  World  as  Will  and  Idea,”  1818,  and  “The  Will 
in  Nature,”  1836. 

168:12.  “Utopia.”  A  book  printed  in  Latin  by  Sir  Thomas 
More,  an  English  statesman  (1478-1535)  about  1516,  though 
written  some  years  before,  described  the  kingdom  of  Utopia 
(literally  “nowhere”),  a  fictitious  country  wherein  were  rem¬ 
edied  all  the  evil  conditions  then  existing  in  Europe.  The 
criticism  was  too  outspoken  for  More  to  venture  to  publish 
the  book  in  England  or  issue  it  in  the  English  language.  It 
was  printed  in  Latin  on  the  Continent  and  remained  long 
untranslated.  The  term  Utopia  has  come  to  mean  a  purely 
ideal  state  or  condition,  impossible  of  attainment. 


NOTES 


436 

169:20.  Buddhistic.  Of  or  pertaining  to  the  religious  and 
ethical  teachings  of  Buddha,  “the  enlightened,”  prince  of  an 
Aryan  clan  seated  during  the  fifth  century  B.c.  about  fifty 
miles  north  of  Benares,  India.  Self-conquest  and  universal 
charity  are  the  main  principles  of  the  Buddhist  teachings. 
From  India,  the  Buddhist  faith  has  spread  to  Thibet,  Ceylon, 
Siam,  and  parts  of  China  and  Japan. 

173:21.  Professor  Herron.  George  D.  Herron,  born  at 
Montezuma,  Md.,  in  1862,  was  ordained  in  the  Congregational 
ministry  and  became  professor  of  applied  Christianity  at 
Iowa  College  in  1893.  Opposition  to  his  teachings,  which 
were  strongly  socialistic,  led  to  his  resignation  in  1900.  He 
initiated  social  crusades  in  Chicago  and  New  York,  founded 
the  Social  Crusader,  and  lectured  on  “The  Economics  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,”  in  which  he  advocated  transforming  the 
present  economic  order  in  conformity  with  the  Christian  prin¬ 
ciples  of  brotherhood.  Expelled  from  the  ministry,  he  went 
to  Italy  and  has  since  devoted  his  time  to  writing.  His  best 
known  works  are  “Between  Caesar  and  Jesus,”  1899,  “Why 
I  Am  a  Socialist,”  1900,  and  “The  Day  of  Judgment,”  1904. 

177:28.  John  Morley.  An  English  statesman  and  author, 
born  in  1838.  He  was  associated  editorially  with  the  Morning 
Star,  1868  to  1870,  the  Fortnightly  Review ,  1867  to  1883,  and 
Macmillan  s  Magazine,  1883.  He  was  chief  secretary  for  Ire¬ 
land  under  Gladstone  in  1886,  and  out  of  this  association  grew 
his  “Life  of  Gladstone”  in  1900.  He  was  a  Boer  sympathizer 
during  the  South  African  War  and  resigned  from  the  Cabinet 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  World  War  in  August,  1914,  because 
his  convictions  were  opposed  to  war  and  he  desired  no  re¬ 
sponsibility  for  British  action  against  Germany  after  Belgium 
was  invaded.  He  died  September  23,  1923. 

178:14.  Benjamin  Kidd.  An  English  sociologist,  born  in 
1858,  who  attracted  much  attention  in  1894  by  his  book 
“Social  Evolution.”  In  this,  he  declared  that  society  should  be 


NOTES 


437 


interpreted  in  terms  of  biology  and  pointed  out  that  one  of 
the  conditions  of  progress  is  the  conflict  between  private  inter¬ 
est  and  social  welfare,  the  struggle  which  eliminates  the  unfit. 

178:16.  Victor  Berger.  Editor  of  the  Milwaukee  Leader ,  a 
socialist  daily.  He  has  written  numerous  essays  and  pam¬ 
phlets  on  social  questions.  He  was  elected  to  the  Sixty-second 
Congress  (1911-13)  from  the  Fifth  Wisconsin  District,  and 
was  the  first  socialist  ever  elected  to  that  body.  Mr.  Berger 
was  born  at  Nieder  Rebbuch,  Austria-Hungary,  in  i860,  and 
received  his  education  in  the  university  at  Budapest  and 
Vienna  but  came  to  America  before  being  graduated. 

181:2.  Engels.  Friedrich  Engels  (1825-95)  was  a  German 
socialist,  who  became  interested  in  the  Chartist  and  Owenist 
movements  in  England  in  1842.  He  was  a  lifelong  friend  and 
fellow  worker  of  Karl  Marx  and  was  a  joint  author  of  the 
Communist  Manifesto  of  1848.  He  took  an  active  part  in 
forming  the  International  Workingmen’s  Association  in  1864. 
His  “Condition  of  the  Working  Classes  in  England”  first  ap¬ 
peared  in  1845. 

185:1.  Mrs.  Florence  Kelley.  Mrs.  Kelley  was  state  in¬ 
spector  of  factories  for  Illinois,  1893-7,  and  has  been  general 
secretary  of  the  National  Consumers’  League  since  1899. 

186  :22.  Mrs.  Henrotin.  Ellen  Martin,  wife  of  Charles 
Henrotin,  a  Chicago  banker,  was  vice  president  of  the  Con¬ 
gressional  Auxiliary  of  the  World’s  Columbian  Exposition, 
1904,  and  president  of  the  General  Federation  of  Women’s 
Clubs,  1894-8.  She  was  decorated  by  the  Sultan  of  Turkey 
with  the  Order  of  Chefakat,  1893;  made  an  Offieier  de 
l’Academie  by  the  French  Republic,  1899;  and  decorated  as 
Chevalier  de  l’Ordre  de  Leopold  by  the  King  of  Belgium  in 
1904. 

190:18.  Governor  Altgeld.  John  Peter  Altgeld,  governor  of 
Illinois  from  1893  to  1897,  achieved  much  notoriety  in  con¬ 
nection  with  his'  pardoning  of  the  Haymarket  anarchists. 


NOTES 


438 

197:2.  Pullman  strike.  The  Pullman  strike  in  1894  was  a 
sympathetic  strike  undertaken  by  the  American  Railway 
Union  in  behalf  of  the  employees  of  the  Pullman  Sleeping 
Car  Company,  the  object  being  to  boycott  all  Pullman  cars 
and  prevent  their  use  on  all  railways.  Traffic  was  delayed  and 
considerable  violence  occurred,  especially  in  Chicago.  Na¬ 
tional  troops  were  brought  into  use  by  President  Cleveland 
over  protests  of  state  governors.  The  president  and  other 
officers  of  the  railway  unions  were  imprisoned  through  the 
use  of  the  injunction,  and  the  strike  was  a  failure.  Miss 
Addams  refers  later  to  the  bewilderment  and  hurt  feelings 
of  George  M.  Pullman,  who  had  built  a  model  town  for  his 
employees  and  was  himself  a  kindly  and  generous  man,  over 
the  discontent  of  the  workers. 

212:12.  Brandeis  brief.  Louis  Dembitz  Brandeis,  asso¬ 
ciate  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  since 
1916,  has  consistently  fought  for  the  cause  of  the  working 
people  in  monopoly  cases.  He  was  counsel  for  the  people  in 
cases  involving  the  constitutionality  of  the  Oregon  and  Illinois 
iohour  laws  for  working  women,  the  Ohio  9-hour  law,  the 
California  8-hour  law,  and  the  Oregon  minimum  wage  law. 

216:12.  Professor  Masurek.  Thomas  G.  Masurek  (com¬ 
monly  spelled  Masaryk ),  president  of  the  newly-formed 
Czecho-Slovakian  Republic,  was  a  professor  at  the  New 
Bohemian  University  at  Prague,  1882,  and  opposed  the  en¬ 
croachment  of  Germany  on  Austria  and  the  aggressive 
policy  of  Austria  in  the  Balkans,  especially  the  annexation  of 
Bosnia.  After  the  outbreak  of  the  World  War,  he  fled  to 
England  where  he  lectured  at  King’s  College,  Oxford,  and 
organized  the  Czecho-Slovakian  movement  for  independence. 

218:19.  Doctor  John  Dewey.  An  American  educator, 
born  at  Burlington,  Vt.,  in  1859,  whose  views  have  revolu¬ 
tionized  American  school  methods.  At  the  time  of  which  Miss 
Addams  writes,  he  was  director  of  the  school  of  education  at 


NOTES 


439 

the  then  recently-founded  University  of  Chicago.  Since  1904, 
he  has  been  professor  of  philosophy  at  Columbia  University. 
His  “School  and  Society,”  1899,  and  “Democracy  and  Educa¬ 
tion,”  1916,  have  had  a  profound  influence  on  American 
educational  ideals. 

222:8.  Passover  Feast.  This  was  originally  the  feast  of 
the  unleavened  bread,  by  which  the  ancient  Israelites  were 
accustomed  to  open  the  harvest  season.  No  one  tasted  the 
new  grain  or  parched  fresh  ears  of  corn  until  the  first  sheaf 
had  been  presented  to  Jehovah.  Then  all  hastened  to  enjoy 
divine  blessing  by  eating  unleavened  cakes  without  waiting 
for  the  dough  to  rise  by  fermentation.  Later,  a  spring 
sacrifice  of  the  firstlings  of  the  flock  became  connected  with 
the  exodus  from  Egypt  and  the  passage  over  the  Red  Sea, 
from  which  the  waters  were  miraculously  rolled  back.  The 
Passover  of  the  time  of  Christ  consisted  of  a  sacrifice  from  the 
flock,  presented  at  the  sanctuary  and  eaten  with  unleavened 
bread.  It  was  slain  on  the  evening  of  the  first  day,  but  the 
use  of  unleavened  bread  continued  for  seven  days. 

225:16.  Field  Museum.  This  museum,  on  the  shore  of 
Lake  Michigan  in  Chicago,  was  founded  by  Marshall  Field, 
the  Chicago  “merchant  prince.”  His  gifts  to  the  museum  total 
$9,000,000.  There  are  four  departments:  anthropology, 
geology,  botany,  and  zoology.  The  working  library  contains 
50,000  volumes. 

226:2.  Reredos.  A  screen  or  partition  wall,  usually  orna¬ 
mented,  behind  an  altar. 

227:20  Maggie  Tulliver.  The  unfortunate  heroine  of 
George  Eliot’s  “The  Mill  on  the  Floss,”  whose  entire  life 
was  spent  in  renunciation  and  sacrifice  of  self  to  her  family. 

235:5.  Professor  Du  Bois.  William  Edward  Du  Bois 
is  a  negro  editor  and  author.  He  was  graduated  from  Fisk 
University  (for  negroes)  at  Nashville,  Tenn.,  and  later  from 
Harvard.  He  also  studied  at  the  University  of  Berlin.  He 


440 


NOTES 


was  for  a  time  professor  of  economics  and  history  at  Atlanta 
University.  Since  1910,  he  has  been  director  of  publicity 
for  the  National  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored 
People. 

235:18.  Garibaldi’s  birthday.  Giuseppe  Garibaldi  (1807- 
82)  was  an  Italian  patriot,  an  associate  of  Mazzini.  After 
Victor  Emmanuel  had  defeated  Francis  II  in  1861,  Garibaldi, 
believing  Rome  must  be  wrested  from  the  Pope  before  Italy 
could  be  unified,  raised  a  force  of  volunteers  to  capture  Rome. 
He  was  checked  by  Victor  Emmanuel,  who  feared  an  attack 
on  the  Pope  would  bring  about  foreign  intervention. 

242:3.  Ben  Tillet.  A  strong  labor  and  socialist  worker.  He 
worked  in  a  brickyard  at  eight  and  served  on  a  fishing  smack 
at  twelve.  He  finally  settled  at  the  Docks  and  organized  the 
Dockers’  Union,  of  which  he  was  for  many  years  secretary. 

242:8.  John  Burns.  A  British  labor  leader,  in  Parliament 
from  1893  until  1908,  when,  by  retaining  under  the  Asquith 
government  the  office  of  president  of  the  Local  Government 
Board  which  he  had  held  under  the  Campbell-Bannerman 
government  since  1905,  he  displeased  the  more  radical 
labor  elements. 

242:20.  Sir  John  Gorst.  An  English  legislator,  born  in 
1835.  He  was  in  Parliament  from  1866  to  1868  and  again 
from  1875  to  1906. 

242:23.  Keir  Hardie.  An  English  labor  leader,  who  worked 
in  the  coal  mines  from  seven  to  twenty-four,  finally  becom¬ 
ing  secretary  of  the  Lanarkshire  Miners’  Union.  He  edited 
the  Cumnock  News ,  1882-6,  and  the  Labor  Leader ,  1887-1903. 
He  founded  the  Socialistic  Independent  Labor  Party  in  1903. 
Entering  Parliament  in  1892,  he  became  leader  of  the  Labor 
Party  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  1906. 

243:5.  Robert  Blatchford.  An  English  newspaper  man, 
born  in  Maidstone  in  1851,  at  present  joint  editor  of  the 
Clarion .  According  to  his  own  account  he  was  “educated 


NOTES 


441 


nowhere/’  was  successively  a  soldier,  a  clerk,  and  a  newspa¬ 
per  man.  His  best  known  books  are  “Britain  for  the  British,” 
1902,  “God  and  My  Neighbors,”  1903,  and  “Not  Guilty,  a 
Plea  for  the  Bottom  Dog,”  1905. 

243:6.  Karl  Marx.  (1818-83.)  A  great  economist  and 
socialist,  properly  regarded  as  the  founder  of  the  modern 
socialist  movement.  Jointly  with  Friedrich  Engels,  Marx 
drew  up  in  1847  what  is  known  as  the  “Communist  Manifesto.” 
It  was  published  in  most  of  the  languages  of  Europe  and  was 
known  as  the  creed  of  the  socialistic  revolutionaries.  Its 
chief  measures  are  set  forth  here  that  advanced  classes 
may,  if  the  teacher  thinks  it  profitable,  trace  their  influence 
on  legislation  both  in  Europe  and  in  America  during  the  last 
half  century.  The  points  are:  (1)  abolition  of  property  jn 
land  and  the  application  of  all  rents  to  public  purposes;  (2) 
progressive  (graduated)  income  tax;  (3)  abolition  of  all  rights 
of  inheritance;  (4)  confiscation  of  property  of  emigrants  and 
rebels;  (5)  centralization  of  credit  in  the  hands  of  the  state  by 
means  of  a  national  bank  with  state  capital  and  an  exclusive 
monopoly;  (6)  government  ownership  of  means  of  communi¬ 
cation  and  transportation;  (7)  extension  of  productive  enter¬ 
prises  by  state  reclamation  of  waste  land  and  general  im¬ 
provement  of  the  soil;  (8)  compulsory  labor  with  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  industrial  armies,  especially  for  agriculture; 
(9)  a  combination  of  agriculture  with  manufacturing,  tending 
to  eliminate  the  distinction  between  town  and  country  by  a 
more  even  distribution  of  population;  (10)  free  education 
with  abolition  of  child  labor  in  factories. 

243:7.  Liebknecht.  Wilhelm  Liebknecht  (1826-1900)  was 
a  German  Social  Democrat  and  agitator,  who  escaped  to 
England  after  the  Revolution  of  1848  and  was  associated  in 
the  Communistbund  with  Marx  and  Engels.  (See  181:2.) 
Returning  to  Germany  in  1862,  he  wrote  for  socialist  dailies, 
becoming  editor  of  the  Berlin  Vorwaerts  in  1890.  He  was 


442 


NOTES 


imprisoned  for  four  months  in  1895  on  a  charge  of  lese  majeste ; 
that  is,  uttering  or  publishing  something  reflecting  upon  the 
administration  of  the  government  or  the  person  of  the  reigning 
sovereign — in  this  case  the  German  “War  Lord,”  Wilhelm  II. 

243:11.  Bernard  Shaw.  A  British  critic,  dramatist,  and 
socialist,  whose  dramas  deal  with  socialistic  doctrine.  “Mrs. 
Warren’s  Profession,”  1893;  “John  Bull’s  Other  Island,”  1904; 
“Arms  and  the  Man,”  1894;  “Candida,”  which  is  considered 
the  best  comedy  since  Sheridan;  and  “Man  and  Superman” 
present  the  best  expositon  of  Shaw’s  philosophy  of  life.  He  is 
noted  for  his  destructive  criticisms  of  society  and  institutions. 

243:13.  Octavia  Hill.  An  English  social  reformer  (1836- 
1912),  who  early  began  efforts  to  improve  the  homes  of  Lon¬ 
don’s  poor.  She  began  work  with  Frederic  Maurice,  but  later 
was  associated  with  John  Ruskin,  who  advanced  money  for 
purchasing  houses  for  improvement  or  for  erecting  new  ones. 
Miss  Hill  taught  the  poor  to  help  themselves  and  inculcated 
the  principles  of  cleanliness,  order,  and  self-respect.  Her 
writings  comprise  “The  Homes  of  London’s  Poor,”  1875,  and 
“Our  Common  Land,”  1877. 

243:20.  Walter  Crane.  An  English  artist,  born  in  1845, 
associated  with  William  Morris  in  the  revival  of  decorative 
arts  and  crafts  in  England..  He  published  “Bases  of  Design,” 
1898,  and  “Line  and  Form,”  1900. 

243 :28.  “Industrial  Democracy.”  This  book  was  published 
in  1897.  Mr.  Webb,  who  was  born  in  1859,  was  formerly  a 
lecturer  on  political  economy  at  the  City  of  London  College 
and  Workingmen’s  College.  He  is  at  present  professor  of 
public  administration  at  the  University  of  London  and  has 
written  many  other  books  on  social  problems. 

243:28.  John  Hobson.  An  English  social  worker  and  writer 
born  in  1868. 

244:6.  Canon  Ingram.  Arthur  Foley  Winnington,  born  in 
1858,  is  an  Anglican  bishop,  who  in  1889  became  head  of 


NOTES 


443 


Oxford  House,  Bethnal  Green.  In  1896,  he  became  dean  of 
Spitalfields;  in  1897,  canon  of  St.  Paul’s  and  Bishop  of  Stepney; 
in  1901,  Bishop  of  London.  “Church  Difficulties,”  1896; 
“Work  in  Great  Cities,”  1896;  and  “Banners  of  the  Christian 
Faith,”  1899,  are  among  his  published  works. 

244:19.  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward.  Mrs.  Ward,  who  was  born 
in  1851,  is  the  granddaughter  of  the  famous  Doctor  Arnold  of 
Rugby.  Her  husband  is  art  critic  for  the  London  Times. 
“Robert  Elsmere,”  1888,  a  suggestive  presentation  of  widely 
discussed  religious  problems,  achieved  much  fame.  She 
founded  a  settlement  for  social  and  philanthropic  work  at 
University  Hall,  London,  in  1890,  now  known  as  the  Passmore 
Edwards  Settlement.  In  1906  she  founded  evening  play  centers 
for  children,  since  spread  into  fourteen  of  the  poorest  districts 
of  London  with  an  average  weekly  attendance  of  30,000. 

244:23.  Browning  House.  A  settlement  at  Walworth  of 
which  Herbert  Stead  (1857 — •)  was  warden  from  1894  to  1921. 
Mr.  Stead  was  editor  of  the  Independent  mid  Nonconformist , 
1890-92,  and  assistant  editor  of  the  Review  of  Reviews ,  1894- 
1912.  He  initiated  a  series  of  conferences  with  Charles  Booth 
which  resulted  in  the  National  Conference  on  Old  Age  Pen¬ 
sions,  1898;  initiated  Labor  Week,  1910;  commenced  agitation 
for  national  Old  Age  Homes,  1913;  and  convened  the  League 
to  Abolish  War  in  1916.  His  “Handbook  of  Young  People’s 
Guilds”  appeared  in  1889;  “No  more  War,”  in  1917;  “The  Pro¬ 
letarian  Gospel  of  Galilee”  and  “Unseen  Leadership,”  in  1922. 

245:8.  South  African  War.  Also  known  as  the  Boer  War 
(1899-1902).  It  originated  in  the  discontent  of  the  foreign 
population  of  the  South  African  Republic,  mostly  British 
subjects,  who  complained  of  having  no  political  rights  while 
owning  most  of  the  property  and  paying  most  of  the  taxes. 
The  war  ended  with  the  Boers  giving  allegiance  to  the  British 
Government,  receiving  in  return  full  amnesty  and  return  of 
their  property. 


444 


NOTES 


245:16.  Fair  of  Nijni-Novgorod.  A  great  commercial  fair 
held  yearly  at  Nijni-Novgorod,  at  the  junction  of  the  Oka 
and  Volga  rivers,  276  miles  east  of  Moscow.  Here  goods  from 
all  parts  of  Russia  were  exchanged  as  well  as  wares  imported 
from  Siberia,  Central  Asia,  the  Caucasus,  and  Persia. 

245:21.  Korolenko.  Vladimir  Korolenko,  born  in  1859,  is  a 
Russian  writer,  who  was  exiled  to  Siberia  for  revolutionary 
ideas  from  1879  to  1885.  His  psychological  novel,  “The  Blind 
Musician,”  1886,  put  him  in  the  front  rank  of  Russian  writers. 
His  subsequent  fiction,  however,  has  been  confined  to  short 
stories. 

246:4.  Aylmer  Maude.  An  English  writer,  interested  in 
social  problems,  born  in  1858.  He  lived  in  Russia  1877-80 
and  1890-97.  He  helped  to  arrange  for  the  migration  of  the 
Doukhobors,  a  peculiar  Russian  religious  sect,  to  Canada  in 
1898.  He  was  lecturer  to  north  Russia  for  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
in  1918-9.  Most  of  his  published  works  deal  with  Russia  and 
Russian  problems  and  writers,  particularly  with  Tolstoy’s 
life  and  works. 

252:27.  Ghetto.  A  quarter  to  which  Jews  are  restricted 
or  in  which  they  live  in  large  numbers.  The  ghetto  is  a  relic 
of  medievalism,  when  Jews  were  not  permitted  in  the  cities 
except  within  portions  that  were  walled.  All  the  Jews  were 
compelled  to  be  “within  the  pale”  by  a  set  hour,  when  the 
gates  were  barred.  The  term  is  loosely  used  to-day  to  indi¬ 
cate  a  part  of  a  community  largely  given  over  to  Jews. 

264:2.  Casus  belli.  A  Latin  phrase  meaning  “cause  of 
war. 

260:1.  Warden  of  Toynbee  Hall.  See  102:24. 

273:14.  Dr.  Alice  Hamilton.  An  American  bacteriologist 
(1869 — ),  a  graduate  of  the  University  of  Michigan,  who  has 
done  graduate  research  work  at  Leipsic,  Munich,  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  the  University  of  Chicago,  and  the 
Pasteur  Institute  in  Paris.  From  1899  to  1902,  she  was  pro- 


NOTES 


445 


fessor  of  pathology  at  Northwestern  University,  Evanston, 
Ill.  In  1910,  she  was  investigator  for  the  Illinois  Commission 
on  Industrial  Diseases,  and  in  1920-21,  she  investigated 
industrial  poisons  for  the  Department  of  Labor.  She  has 
been  assistant  professor  of  industrial  medicine  at  the  Harvard 
Medical  School  since  1919. 

276:5.  Mrs.  Britton.  Mrs.  Gertrude  Howe  Britton,  born 
in  Chicago  in  1871,  is  a  social  worker,  who  has  been  a  resident 
of  Hull-House  since  1895.  She  was  the  first  officer  of  the 
Juvenile  Protective  Association  and  a  member  of  the  Chicago 
Board  of  Education,  1913-16.  She  has  been  superintendent  of 
the  Bureau  of  Social  Service  for  Cook  County  since  1916. 

277:1.  Ergograph.  From  erg,  a  theoretical  unit  of  work  or 
energy,  being  the  work  done  by  a  dyne  (unit  of  force)  working 
through  a  centimeter  of  space,  and  grapho,  I  write. 

279:18.  Dr.  Graham  Taylor.  An  American  sociologist, 
born  at  Schenectady,  N.  Y.,  in  1857.  He  was  ordained  in  the 
Dutch  Reformed  ministry,  1873.  Since  1892,  he  has  been 
professor  of  social  economics  at  the  Chicago  Theological 
Seminary.  He  was  the  founder  and  resident  warden  of  the 
Chicago  Commons  Social  Settlement  in  1894.  He  is  president 
of  the  Chicago  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy  and  asso¬ 
ciate  editor  of  the  Survey.  In  1913,  he  published  “Religion  in 
Social  Action.” 

281:12.  Miss  McDowell.  Mary  McDowell,  a  member  of 
the  University  of  Chicago  faculty,  was  born  in  1854.  She  is 
a  noted  settlement  worker  and  since  1893  has  been  director 
of  the  Chicago  Settlement  in  the  stockyards  district.  She  is 
also  director  of  the  Frederick  Douglass  Center  and  of  the 
Immigrants’  Protective  League. 

287:3.  Miss  Julia  Lathrop.  An  active  worker  in  various 
reform  movements,  born  at  Rockford,  Ill.,  1858.  During  her 
connections  with  Hull-House,  she  has  made  a  splendid  study 
of  the  care  of  the  insane,  better  education  of  children,  and 


NOTES 


446 

juvenile  court  laws.  She  has  several  times  visited  foreign 
countries  to  observe  methods  employed  there.  Her  public 
services  include:  member  of  the  Illinois  State  Board  of 
Charities,  1893-1909;  former  president  of  the  Illinois  Society 
for  Mental  Hygiene;  former  vice  president  of  the  Chicago 
School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy;  former  chief  of  Children’s 
Bureau,  Department  of  Labor,  Washington.  During  the 
absence  of  Miss  Addams  on  her  present  world  tour  in  the 
interests  of  peace,  Miss  Lathrop  is  acting  head  of  Hull-House. 
A  recent  Congress  of  American  Women  held  at  Baltimore 
selected  Miss  Lathrop  as  the  foremost  American  woman  in 
child  welfare  work. 

295:8.  Governor  Pingree.  Hazen  Senter  Pingree  (1842- 

1901) ,  while  mayor  of  Detroit,  189098,  developed  the  plan 
of  assigning  the  vacant  lands  of  the  city  to  the  poor  for  culti¬ 
vating  potatoes,  thereby  earning  the  nicknaVne  “Potato 
Pingree.”  He  was  Republican  governor  of  Michigan  in  1896, 
resigning  in  1900. 

302:7.  Mayor  Dunne.  Edward  Fitzsimmons  Dunne,  a 
Chicago  attorney,  born  in  Waterville,  Conn.,  1843,  was 
mayor  of  Chicago,  1905-7.  He  served  as  governor  of  Illinois 
from  1913  to  1917. 

303:10.  Colonel  Parker.  Francis  Wayland  Parker  (1837- 

1902)  was  an  American  educator  who  served  in  the  Civil  War 
and  rose  to  the  rank  of  colonel.  He  was  principal  of  the  Cook 
County  Normal  School  in  1883;  president  of  the  Chicago 
Normal  school  in  1896;  and  president  of  the  Chicago  Institute 
in  1899. 

313:14.  World’s  Fair  at  St.  Louis.  Held  at  St.  Louis,  Mo., 
in  1904,  in  commemoration  of  the  one-hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  purchase  of  the  Louisiana  Territory  by  President 
Jefferson  in  1803. 

314:6.  “Antigone.”  A  play  by  Sophocles,  the  great  Greek 
dramatist  (495-406  b.c.),  having  for  its  heroine  Antigone, 


NOTES 


447 

daughter  of  Oedipus,  King  of  Thebes,  who  put  out  his  eyes 
and  resigned  his  throne  on  finding  he  had  unwittingly  married 
his  mother.  Antigone  was  noted  for  her  fidelity  to  her  blind 
father  and  also  for  her  devotion  in  burying  the  body  of  her 
brother,  Polyniees,  contrary  to  Theban  edict.  For  this,  she 
was  sentenced  to  be  buried  alive  in  a  vault. 

318:22.  Royce.  Josiah  Royce,  born  in  California  in  1855, 
was  from  1914  to  the  time  of  his  death  professor  of  natural 
religion,  moral  philosophy,  and  civil  polity  at  Harvard, 
where  he  had  been  a  teacher  since  1885.  Both  as  an  instructor 
and  a  writer,  he  has  exercised  a  profound  influence  on  Amer¬ 
ican  thought. 

321:14.  Mardi  Gras.  Literally  “fat  Tuesday,”  a  day  of 
feasting  and  merrymaking  preceding  the  Lenten  season, 
which  opens  the  following  day,  Ash  Wednesday,  and  con¬ 
tinues  for  forty  days. 

330:25.  Bronte  sisters.  Charlotte,  Emily,  and  Anne  Bronte 
were  the  daughters  of  a  country  clergyman  in  the  north  of 
England.  All  were  writers,  Charlotte  being  the  most  talented. 
They  drew  their  characters  from  the  narrow  life  about  them 
with  remarkable  fidelity,  and  their  works  are  characterized 
by  a  fierce  glow  of  fire  and  imagination  and  depths  of  human 
character  revealed  through  suffering.  Charlotte  (1816-55) 
is  best  known  for  her  novel  “Jane  Eyre”;  “The  Professor” 
and  “Shirley”  having  also  attracted  much  attention.  Emily’s 
best  work  is  “Wuthering  Heights”;  Anne’s  is  “Agnes  Grey.” 

333 :2S-  uAs  more  exposed  .  .  .”  These  lines  are  dedicated  to 
Mrs.  Alzina  Parsons  Stevens,  one  of  the  early  Hull-House 
residents,  who  was  president  of  the  Woman’s  Club  from  1898 
to  1900.  Because  of  her  early  and  hard  experiences  as  a 
factory  worker,  she  identified  herself  throughout  her  life 
with  the  labor  movement,  especially  with  reference  to  children. 
She  was  a  member  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  and  was  influential 
in  organizing  the  Women’s  Union  Label  League,  the  first 


NOTES 


448 

women’s  organization  that  succeeded  the  Knights  of  Labor. 
She  was  one  of  the  first  to  start  the  Juvenile  Court  movement 
in  Chicago  and  one  of  three  who  founded  the  Chicago  Parental 
School. 

334:12.  Mrs.  Bowen.  (See  Introduction.)  Louise  de  Koven 
Bowen  (Mrs.  Joseph  Bowen)  is  a  well-known  Chicago  social 
worker,  born  in  1859.  She  has  served  as  president  of  the 
Juvenile  Protective  Association,  vice  president  of  the  United 
Charities  of  Chicago,  treasurer  of  Hull-House,  and  director 
of  the  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy. 

335:16.  Palace  of  Delight.  See  110:13. 

339:4.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Barnett.  See  102:24. 

345:4.  Yiddish  poet.  Morris  Rosenfeld,  author  of  “The 
Sweatshop,”  was  born  in  Poland  in  1862.  Coming  to  New 
York  to  toil  in  the  gloomy  sweatshops,  he  poured  out  his 
sense  of  suffering  and  wrongs  in  poems  written  in  Yiddish 
and  published  first  in  the  Yiddish  papers  of  New  York’s 
Ghetto  and  later  in  book  form.  Professor  Leo  Wiener  of 
Columbia  University,  who  discusses  Rosenfeld  in  his  excellent 
study  of  contemporary  Yiddish  writers,  “The  History  of 
Yiddish  Literature  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,”  considers 
Rosenfeld  the  most  striking  figure  among  Yiddish  writers  in 
America  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century.  “Rosenfeld’s 
poetry  will  survive  as  a  witness  of  that  lowermost  hell  which 
political  persecution,  religious  and  racial  hatred,  and  indus¬ 
trial  oppression  have  created  for  the  Jew  at  the  end  of  our 
enlightened  nineteenth  century,”  writes  Professor  Wiener. 

354:6.  “Ajax  of  Sophocles.”  A  drama  based  on  the  life  of 
the  Greek  legendary  hero,  Ajax,  who  wras  second  only  to 
Achilles  in  bravery.  During  the  siege  of  Troy,  when  the  armor 
of  the  dead  Hector  was  awarded  to  Ulysses  instead  of  to 
himself,  Ajax  turned  mad  from  vexation  and  stabbed  himself. 

354:15.  “Electra.”  Probably  the  Electra  of  Sophocles, 
since  his  Ajax  wras  also  presented.  Euripides  has  also  taken 


NOTES 


449 


Electra,  daughter  of  Agamemnon  and  the  faithless  Clytem- 
nestra  and  sister  of  Orestes  and  Iphigenia,  for  the  heroine  of 
one  of  his  dramas. 

356:28.  Passion  Play  at  Oberammergau.  This  is  a  play 
representing  scenes  from  the  life  of  Christ,  each  scene  being 
prefaced  by  one  of  similar  import  from  the  Old  Testament. 
It  has  been  given,  with  occasional  breaks,  every  ten  years 
since  1633  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  little  Bavarian  village, 
who  in  that  year  first  gave  the  play  in  the  hope  of  staying 
the  plague  which  was  then  raging.  About  700  actors  are 
required,  all  belonging  to  the  village.  Each  performance 
lasts  nine  hours,  with  a  short  intermission  at  noon.  It  is  held 
in  an  open-air  theater  each  Sunday  during  the  summer. 
Since  the  villagers  regard  the  performance  as  a  solemn  act 
of  religious  worship,  all  performances  are  characterized  by 
the  greatest  reverence. 

359:15.  Talmudic  lore.  The  “Talmud”  is  the  Hebrew  book 
of  laws.  There  are  two  versions,  the  Palestinian,  embodying 
the  discussions  of  the  laws  by  hundreds  of  doctors  living  in 
Palestine,  chiefly  in  Galilee,  from  the  end  of  the  second  to 
the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century.  The  Babylonian  embodies 
similar  discussions  by  Babylonian  doctors  from  about  the  year 
190  to  the  end  of  the  sixth  century.  The  purpose  of  these  dis¬ 
cussions  is  to  exhibit  the  development  of  “oral  law”  and  the 
views  taken  of  this  development  by  rabbis  of  various  times. 
The  doctors  discuss  the  correctness  of  the  text  and  meanings 
of  the  laws  and  introduce  the  whole  body  of  tradition  handed 
down  to  their  time.  The  “Talmud”  therefore  furnishes  a  rich 
background  for  Jewish  history  down  to  the  end  of  the  sixth 
century  a.d. 

360:3.  Ibsen.  Henrik  Ibsen  (1828-1906)  was  a  Norwegian 
dramatist,  widely  read  and  discussed  in  the  United  States. 
His  plays  are  studies  in  human  responsibility  under  modern 
conditions,  which  in  many  points  Ibsen  considers  danger- 


NOTES 


450 

ously  diseased.  He  has  become  “the  poet  of  protest.”  He 
writes  of  vice  with  loathing  and  lays  bare  the  causes  of  evils 
but  prescribes  no  remedies.  His  work  marks  a  new  stage  in 
dramatic  art,  since  he  is  thoroughly  realistic  and  unconven¬ 
tional.  Representative  Ibsen  plays  are:  “Pillars  of  Society,” 
1877;  “The  Doll’s  House,”  1879;  “Ghosts,”  1881;  “Rosmer- 
holm,”  1886;  “Hedda  Gabler,”  1890;  “Little  Eyolf,”  1894; 
“When  We  Dead  Awaken,”  1900. 

360:4.  Yeats.  William  Butler  Yeats  is  an  Irish  writer, 
born  in  Dublin  in  1865.  His  poetry  has  been  very  popular  in 
America,  particularly  his  “Plays  for  an  Irish  Theater,”  1912. 

360:15.  Wagnerian  combination.  Probably  a  reference  to 
the  methods  of  the  school  conducted  at  Baireuth  by  Frau 
Cosima  Wagner,  widow  of  Richard  Wagner  (1813-83),  the 
great  German  dramatic  composer  and  reformer  of  musical 
drama. 

362:4.  Phidias.  A  great  Greek  sculptor,  born  about  500 
b.c.  His  famous  Parthenon  statue  of  Athene,  done  in  ivory 
and  gold,  was  completed  in  438.  His  masterpiece  was  the 
the  great  gold  and  ivory  statue  of  Zeus  in  the  newly-erected 
temple  at  Olympia,  where  he  died. 

362:6.  David.  King  David,  who  was  called  from  tending 
his  father’s  flocks  to  rule  over  Israel. 

362:7.  St.  Francis.  Francis  of  Assisi  in  Italy  (1182-1226), 
founder  of  the  order  of  Franciscans.  His  chief  passion  was  a 
consuming  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  and  devotion  to  others. 
Hence  he  sought  out  the  lepers,  loathsome  and  hitherto 
abhorred,  and  kissed  them  and  ministered  to  their  wants. 

362:8.  Patrick.  Patron  saint  of  Ireland,  who  is  reputed 
to  have  freed  the  island  from  snakes.  As  a  youth  of  fifteen, 
he  was  carried  off  from  the  neighborhood  at  the  head  of  the 
Solway  and  sold  as  a  slave  on  the  opposite  coast  of  Ireland, 
by  the  Scots  and  Piets  during  one  of  their  raids  about  41 1  a.d. 
Escaping  after  six  years,  he  prepared  himself  for  the  priest- 


NOTES 


45i 


hood,  probably  at  St.  Ninian’s  Monastery,  and  returned  to 
Ireland  as  a  missionary.  His  death  is  said  to  have  occurred 
in  469  a.d. 

362:10.  Hans  Sachs.  The  cobbler  poet  of  Germany,  born 
at  Nuremburg  in  1494.  Sachs  was  an  ardent  follower  of 
Luther,  and  his  hymns  are  the  best  of  the  thousands  of  poems 
written  by  him.  He  was  the  son  of  a  shoemaker  and  was 
himself  trained  to  the  same  calling. 

362:11.  Jeanne  d’Arc.  Joan  of  Arc,  the  Maid  of  Orleans, 
was  born  in  1411  in  the  village  of  Domremy.  She  was  a  girl 
of  a  deeply  religious  nature,  who  became  impressed  with  the 
prophecy  that  the  calamities  which  fell  on  France  through 
the  depravity  of  a  woman  should  be  removed  by  the  agency 
of  a  chaste  virgin  who  should  come  from  the  forest  of  Dom¬ 
remy.  Led  by  her  “voices,”  she  guided  the  forces  of  France 
to  victory  until  she  was  betrayed  into  the  hands  of  the  Eng¬ 
lish  and  burned  by  them  as  a  witch,  May  30,  1431. 

362:18.  William  Morris.  An  English  socialist,  poet,  and 
artist  (1834-96).  Educated  at  Oxford,  he  intended  to  found 
a  religious  brotherhood  but  instead  became  an  architect. 
In  1861,  in  connection  with  Rossetti,  Burne-Jones,  and  others, 
he  established  a  firm  for  the  designing  and  manufacturing 
of  artistic  furniture  and  household  decorations.  Later  he 
took  up  the  manufacture  of  tapestry,  dyeing,  book  illum¬ 
inating,  and  printing.  In  1890,  he  founded  the  famous  Kelm- 
scott  Press  at  Hammersmith.  For  the  practical  advancement 
of  the  lesser  arts  and  of  the  doctrine  that  all  things  should  be 
made  beautiful,  Morris  did  more  than  any  other  man  of  his 
time.  In  1885,  he  became  an  active  socialist  and  delivered 
lectures  to  workingmen  as  well  as  contributed  to  the  Common¬ 
weal ,  the  organ  of  the  Socialist  League. 

362:18.  Walt  Whitman.  An  eccentric  American  poet 
(1819-92)  whose  poems,  written  on  unconventional  subjects 
in  unrhymed,  irregular  verse,  aroused  a  storm  of  discussion. 


452 


NOTES 


His  writings  are  “not  art,  but  propaganda — philosophic, 
sociopolitical,  artistic.”  He  himself  lived  the  life  he  advocated, 
tramping  the  open  in  enjoyment  of  nature,  scorning  the 
refinements  of  society.  “Leaves  of  Grass,”  a  collection  of  his 
irregular  verse,  is  his  best-known  work. 

362:19.  Pasteur.  Louis  Pasteur  (1822-1905)  was  an 
eminent  French  chemist  and  bacteriologist,  whose  hundredth 
anniversary  was  recently  celebrated  by  his  countrymen. 
His  studies  in  pathological  research  led  to  the  preparation 
of  vaccines  to  be  used  in  making  man  and  the  higher  animals 
immune  to  such  diseases  as  anthrax,  fowl  cholera,  diphtheria, 
and  hydrophobia.  Milk  is  “pasteurized”  to  destroy  germs 
because  of  Pasteur’s  discoveries  in  research. 

362:26.  Florence  Nightingale.  Miss  Nightingale  (1820- 
1910)  was  the  pioneer  of  the  army  of  trained  nurses. 
Hearing  of  the  sufferings  of  the  English  soldiers  during  the 
Crimean  War,  she  sailed  for  the  Crimea  in  1854  with  a  force 
of  thirty-eight  volunteer  nurses.  Despite  the  prejudice  against 
women  nurses,  Miss  Nightingale’s  little  band  did  such  heroic 
work  as  to  call  forth  general  admiration.  Her  own  nightly 
rounds  of  the  wards,  lamp  in  hand,  inspired  Longfellow’s 
beautiful  poem,  Santa  Filomena ,  with  its  picture  of  the 
“lady  with  the  lamp.”  The  British  Government  gave  her 
£50,000,  with  which  she  founded  a  home  for  training 
nurses.  Her  influence  and  example  led  to  the  founding 
of  the  Red  Cross  Society. 

364:8.  Dante.  Dante  Alighieri  (1265-1321)  was  the  great¬ 
est  of  the  Italian  poets.  He  is  best  known  for  his  “Divine 
Comedy,”  with  its  vivid  pictures  of  purgatory  and  hell,  as  con¬ 
ceived  by  the  mediaeval  mind.  This  great  work  was  completed 
only  a  short  time  before  his  death.  He  stands  among  the 
first  of  the  world’s  greatest  authors. 

364:11.  Pre-Raphaelites.  A  name  applied  to  a  school  or 
group  that  arose  in  England  about  the  middle  of  the  nine- 


NOTES 


453 


teenth  century  and  accomplished  great  results  both  in  art 
and  in  literature.  The  members  sought  their  inspiration  in 
the  art  of  the  age  preceding  Raphael,  a  time  when  art  was 
simple,  sincere,  and  religious.  William  Morris  owed  much  of 
his  inspiration  to  his  connection  with  this  movement. 

365:4.  Kishinev.  The  capital  of  the  province  of  Bessarabia 
in  Russia,  eighty-six  miles  northwest  of  Odessa  on  the  Dniester 
'River.  In  1912,  41  per  cent  of  the  population  of  125,876  was 
Jewish.  In  1903,  the  town  was  the  scene  of  an  unprovoked 
massacre  of  Jewish  inhabitants  by  a  mob,  with  the  approval 
of  the  authorities.  This  was  the  first  of  a  series  of  pogroms , 
or  slaughters,  throughout  Russia,  extending  over  a  series  of 
years.  A  second  massacre  occurred  at  Kishinev  in  1905. 

366:11.  Russian  Duma.  (Douma.)  The  Russian  parlia¬ 
ment,  created  by  inperial  edict  in  1905.  Previous  to  that 
time,  Russia  had  been  an  absolute  monarchy,  the  will  of  the 
Czar  being  uncurbed  by  any  legislative  body. 

366:13.  Madame  Breshkovsky.  Ekaterina  Breshkovskaya, 
“the  grandmother  of  the  Russian  Revolution,”  was  born  of 
well-to-do  parents  in  1843.  Being  brought  up  in  the  country, 
she  sympathized  with  the  peasants,  as  did  Tolstoy.  At 
twenty-five,  she  left  her  husband  and  child  “to  preach  the 
gospel  of  liberty.”  Four  years  later  she  was  arrested  and 
sentenced  to  twenty-two  years  in  Siberia.  She  returned  to 
Russia  in  1896,  and  at  once  started  the  Social  Revolution. 
She  visited  America  in  1904  and  was  again  sent  to  Siberia 
on  her  return.  Freed  by  the  Revolution  of  1917,  she  returned 
to  Russia  to  renew  her  work  among  the  common  people. 
Despite  her  enfeebled  condition,  due  to  her  years  and  long 
confinement,  she  at  once  set  about  establishing  printing  press¬ 
es  in  the  more  populous  centers  of  Russia  for  circulating 
further  propaganda  among  the  peasants. 

366:14.  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul.  Originally  a  fortress  on 
Peterburgsky  Island,  opposite  the  Winter  Palace  in  St. 


454 


NOTES 


Petersburg  (Petrograd).  At  the  time  of  which  Miss  Addams 
writes,  it  was  used  as  a  state  prison.  “Imprisoned  in  St. 
Peter  and  St.  Paul”  meant  the  first  step  on  the  road  to  Si¬ 
beria  or  the  gallows  for  the  Russian  political  offender. 

366:16.  Prince  Kropotkin.  A  Russian  geographer  and 
anarchist,  born  in  1842.  His  interest  in  social  reforms  grew 
out  of  his  observation  of  the  unhappy  economic  conditions, 
particularly  among  the  peasantry,  in  the  course  of  his  geo¬ 
graphic  observations  in  various  parts  of  Russia,  including 
Siberia  and  Finland.  When  the  government  refused  to  remedy 
conditions,  Kropotkin  resolved  to  devote  his  life  to  the  solving 
of  social  problems.  He  soon  joined  the  anarchists,  and  has 
several  times  been  imprisoned.  Since  1896,  he  has  made  his 
home  in  England. 

366  :22.  Assassination  of  McKinley.  William  McKinley, 
President  of  the  United  States  from  1897  to  1901,  was  shot 
by  Leon  Czolgosz  while  holding  a  reception  in  the  Music 
Hall  of  the  Pan-American  Congress  at  Buffalo,  N.  Y., 
September  6,  1901,  six  months  after  his  second  inauguration. 
Mr.  McKinley  was  born  in  1843. 

368:19.  Bakunin.  Mikhail  Bakunin  (1814-76)  was  a 
Russian  agitator  and  writer  and  founder  of  militant  anarch¬ 
ism,  which  proposed  the  overthrow  of  all  established  forms  of 
government.  He  took  part  in  various  German  outbreaks, 
1841-50,  and  was  condemned  to  death,  first  by  the  Saxon, 
later  by  the  Austrian,  and  finally  by  the  Russian  Government. 
He  was  sent  to  Siberia  for  life  in  1855  but  escaped  to  Japan 
and  thence  through  America  to  England  in  1859.  Here  he 
was  associated  with  Marx  and  Engels  and  founded  the 
Social  Democratic  Alliance  in  1869.  He  was  expelled  from 
England  in  1872  and  retired  to  Switzerland. 

375  :20.  Prima  facie.  A  latin  phrase  meaning  “at  first 
sight.”  Prima  facie  evidence  is  evidence  which,  without 
minute  examination  into  its  merits,  seems  plausible  or  correct, 


NOTES 


4S5 

although  closer  investigation  may  prove  it  entirely  the  op¬ 
posite. 

378:2.  Edelstadt  group.  An  American  anarchist  group, 
which'originated  in  New  York  under  the  leadership  of  David 
Edelstadt,  a  young  Jewish  poet,  who  died  not  long  after  the 
period  of  which  Miss  Addams  writes.  Edelstadt,  who  wrote 
in  Yiddish,  was  known  as  “the  poet  of  the  Anarchist  Party. ” 
His  followers  were  mostly  of  the  milder  “literary”  type.  His 
verses  were  chiefly  in  praise  of  anarchism  and  the  heroes  of 
freedom  who  had  fallen  in  unequal  combat.  Professor  Leo 
Wiener  says  of  Edelstadt  in  his  “History  of  Yiddish  Litera¬ 
ture  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,”  “His  poems  seem  to  be 
written,  not  because  he  was  a  poet,  but  because  he  belongs 
to  the  Anarchistic  Party.” 

381:21.  Puritans.  The  name  applied  to  seceders  from  the 
English  Church,  so  called  because  they  rejected  all  human 
tradition  and  interference  in  religion,  acknowledging  the  sole 
authority  of  the  “pure  word  of  God,”  without  “note  or  com¬ 
ment.”  Their  motto  was,  “The  Bible,  the  whole  Bible,  and 
nothing  but  the  Bible.”  New  England  was  settled  largely 
by  the  Puritans. 

381:21.  Lafayette.  Consult  any  text  on  American  history 
for  the  services  of  Lafayette  during  the  American  Revolution. 
Recall  also  the  wave  of  sentiment  that  swept  France  and 
America  more  than  a  hundred  years  later,  when  General 
John  Pershing,  commander-in-chief  of  the  American  Expedi¬ 
tionary  Forces  aiding  France  in  her  struggle  for  life  against 
the  Germans,  stood  at  the  the  tomb  of  Lafayette.  The  simple 
phrase,  “Lafayette,  we  are  here!”  uttered  then  by  Colonel 
C.  E.  Stanton,  expressed  the  gratitude  of  a  whole  nation  to 
the  gailant  young  Frenchman  who  had  swung  France  to  the 
aid  of  America  in  her  hour  of  need. 

381  :22.  Carl  Schurz.  A  German-American  soldier,  polit¬ 
ical  leader,  and  journalist,  who  came  to  America  in  1852  by 


NOTES 


456 

way  of  London,  where  he  had  escaped  after  taking  part  in  the 
Revolution  of  1848.  He  rose  to  the  rank  of  major  general 
during  the  Civil  War.  He  took  up  journalism  and  founded 
the  Detroit  Post  in  1866  and  was  editor  with  Joseph  Pfilitzer 
of  the  Westliche  Posty  a  St.  Louis  German  paper,  1869-75. 
From  1881  to  1883  he  was  editor  and  part  owner  of  the  New 
York  Evening  Post.  Mr.  Schurz,  who  was  born  in  1829, 
held  many  important  political  positions.  He  died  in  1906. 

382:9.  Cavour  and  Bismarck.  Count  Cavour  (18 1061) 
was  an  Italian  statesman,  called  “the  regenerator  of  Italy” 
and  considered  one  of  the  greatest  of  modern  statesmen.  It 
was  due  chiefly  to  Cavour  that  Italy  recovered  her  national 
rights  and  led  the  way  in  two  of  the  most  beneficent  revolutions 
(1830  and  1848)  that  have  taken  place  in  the  history  of  the 
world.  Prince  Karl  Otto  von  Bismarck  (1815-98)  was  known 
as  the  “Iron  Chancellor  of  Germany.”  It  was  largely  through 
his  efforts  that  the  unification  of  the  modern  German  mon¬ 
archy  was  achieved.  Bismarck  became  first  chancellor  of  the 
new  German  Empire.  Llis  sway  remained  unbroken  until 
the  accession  of  William  II  in  1888.  Two  autocrats  came  into 
collision,  and  Bismarck  resigned,  after  numerous  quarrels,  in 
March,  1890. 

384:11.  Vladimir  Bourtzeff  .  .  .  Azeff.  BourtzefF,  still  a 
social  revolutionist,  is  living  in  Paris,  where  he  violently 
opposes  the  methods  of  the  present  Russian  revolutionists. 
For  a  time,  he  edited  a  magazine,  Byloe  {The  Past).  Azeff, 
who  posed  as  a  revolutionist  in  order  to  gain  the  confidence 
of  his  victims  and  betray  them  to  the  police,  was  afterward 
shot  by  the  revolutionaries. 

384:21.  Gorki.  Maxim  Gorki  (also  Gorky )  is  a  Russian 
writer,  born  in  1868.  He  has  several  times  been  arrested  for 
his  revolutionary  sympathies.  His  visit  to  the  United  States 
in  1906  to  obtain  funds  for  Russian  freedom  was  ruined  by 
the  incidents  referred  to  by  Miss  Addams,  and  he  was  com- 


NOTES 


457 


pelled  to  abandon  his  tour.  His  novels  are  based  chiefly  on 
life  in  the  underworld,  which  he  describes  with  startling 
fidelity. 

387:13.  Giordano  Bruno.  An  Italian  philosopher  (1548- 
1600),  whose  philosophy  took  the  form  of  attacks  upon  estab¬ 
lished  religion.  His  “Expulsion  of  the  Triumphant  Beast” 
represents  the  monks  as  pedants  who  would  destroy  all  joy  on 
earth  but  who  are  themselves  greedy,  dissolute,  and  breeders 
of  dissensions  and  squabbles.  It  scoffs  at  the  mysteries  of 
faith,  puts  the  Jewish  records  of  the  Old  Testament  on  a  level 
with  the  Greek  myths,  and  laughs  at  the  miracles  of  the  New 
Testament.  Bruno  was  arrested  by  the  agents  of  the  In¬ 
quisition,  and,  after  seven  years  of  imprisonment,  burned 
at  the  stake. 

389:9.  Amiel.  Henri  Frederic  Amiel  (1821-81)  was  a  Swiss 
author,  best  known  for  his  “Fragments  of  an  Intimate  Diary,” 
wherein  he  sets  down  freely  his  shortcomings  and  errors. 

395 :i 3.  Jean  Valjean.  Valjean  was  the  hero  of  Victor 
Hugo’s  “Les  Miserables.”  Out  of  work  and  desperate,  he 
stole  a  loaf  of  bread  to  feed  the  seven  starving  children  of  his 
widowed  sister.  For  this  he  was  cast  into  prison.  Escaping 
after  nineteen  years,  through  a  simple  invention  he  amassed 
great  wealth,  which  he  devoted  to  helping  the  needy  and  the 
oppressed,  though  he  himself  lived  constantly  within  the 
shadow  of  the  law. 

399:6.  Rivaling  Werther.  Werther  was  the  hero  of  Goethe’s 
“Sorrows  of  Werther,”  a  highly-sentimental  German  romance, 
published  in  1774. 

405:8.  Olympian  winners.  The  Olympic  games  were  held 
every  fourth  year  in  early  Grecian  times.  While  the  first 
recorded  list  of  winners  dates  from  776  b.c.,  the  games  were 
instituted  much  earlier.  No  one  not  of  Greek  blood  and  no 
one  convicted  of  a  crime  or  of  impiety  might  participate, 
since  the  games  were  of  a  highly  religious  nature,  the  display 


458 


NOTES 


of  manly  strength  being  thought  pleasing  to  the  gods.  The 
winner  received  only  a  wreath  of  wild  olive  at  Olympia,  but 
at  home  enjoyed  the  gifts  and  veneration  of  his  fellow  citizens. 
Poets  recited  his  victories  in  odes,  and  sculptors  reproduced 
them  in  stone  and  marble.  To  the  end  of  his  days,  he  re¬ 
mained  a  distinguished  man. 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 

Chapter  I.  i.  Why  does  Miss  Addams  center  all  her 
earlier  experiences  around  her  father? 

2.  At  what  age  did  Miss  Addams  first  show  her  interest  in 
the  poor  and  unfortunate? 

3.  What  two  things  mentioned  by  Miss  Addams  in  this 
chapter  help  to  explain  the  close  tie.  between  the  little  girl 
and  her  father? 

4.  What  do  you  know  of  the  beliefs  of  the  Quakers  that 
will  explain  why  the  child  found  the  religious  atmosphere  of 
her  home  different  from  that  of  the  others  of  her  community? 

5.  Sum  up  your  impressions  of  Mr.  Addams  from  the  in¬ 
cidents  related  in  this  chapter.  Try  to  find  a  single  apt  word 
or  phrase  to  express  each  quality. 

6.  Can  you  find  a  sentence  in  this  chapter  that  will  show 
why  Miss  Addams’s  efforts  during  the  World  War  were 
directed  toward  peace  and  toward  a  better  understanding 
among  all  nations? 

Chapter  II.  1.  Name  the  various  ways  in  which  the 
Civil  War  was  impressed  upon  the  minds  of  the  Addams 
children. 

2.  What  resemblance  did  the  little  child  see  between  “Old 
Abe,”  the  Wisconsin  war  eagle,  and  Abraham  Lincoln? 

3.  How  does  the  atmosphere  at  Rockford,  as  explained  in 
this  chapter,  help  us  to  understand  Miss  Addams’s  devotion 
to  an  ideal  later? 

4.  What  facts  does  the  author  give  to  show  that  the  girls 
of  her  group  were  in  earnest? 

459 


460  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

5.  Why  did  Miss  Addams  not  become  a  foreign  mission¬ 
ary? 

In  what  way  may  her  later  labors  at  Hull-House  be 
termed  “missionary  work”? 

6.  In  what  ways  vjjas  life  in  a  girl’s  school  in  the  ’70’s  dif¬ 
ferent  from  that  of  the  present  day? 

7.  Why  does  Miss  Addams  relate  the  incident  of  the  orator¬ 
ical  contest? 

8.  What  does  Miss  Addams  consider  the  best  moral  train¬ 
ing  she  received  at  Rockford?  Why? 

9.  Relate  the  trade  union  incident,  and  point  out  the  in¬ 
consistency  in  the  action  of  the  members.  What  conviction 
did  Miss  Addams  receive  from  the  incident? 

10.  What  career  had  the  author  decided  upon  for  herself 
while  in  school?  How  much  of  her  plans  did  she  carry  out? 

11.  How  did  Miss  Addams  show  her  interest  in  scientific 
study?  What  did  she  believe  women  might  gain  from  such 
study? 

Chapter  IV.  1.  After  reading  this  chapter,  explain  why 
the  author  named  it  “The  Snare  of  Preparation.” 

2.  Recount  Miss  Addams’s  London  experiences  and  show 
how  they  were  unconsciously  helping  to  direct  her  toward 
her  later  work  at  Hull-House. 

3.  Give  Miss  Addams’s  impression  of  the  effect  of  college 
education  upon  the  women  of  her  day.  Has  the  nature  of 
education  for  women  changed  since  that  time?  Is  there  still 
room  for  improvement? 

4.  What  was  the  mistake  made  by  the  American  mother 
who  was  keeping  her  daughter  abroad  for  a  musical  educa¬ 
tion  ? 

5.  Why  did  Miss  Addams  lose  interest  in  Prince  Albert 
and  his  tutor?  Was  she  justified? 

6.  Why  was  she  so  interested  in  the  work  of  Diirer? 


STUDY  QUESTIONS  461 

7.  How  does  Miss  Addams  explain  her  formal  entrance 
into  the  church  ?  Are  her  reasons  good  ? 

Chapter  V.  1.  Why  did  Professor  Davidson  oppose 
Miss  Addams’s  settlement  plan?  What  caused  his  later 
change  of  attitude? 

^  2.  State  the  theory  on  which  Hull-House  was  opened,  and 

explain  it  in  your  own  words. 

3.  Why  were  the  founders  of  Hull-House  so  careful  in  its 
furnishings? 

4.  Repeat  Miss  Addams’s  description  of  Halsted  Street, 
*  and  tell  of  the  changes  of  the  first  twenty  years.  What 

other  changes  in  the  last  fourteen  years?  (See  Preface.) 

5.  What  is  the  “the  idea  underlying  our  self-govern¬ 
ment”? 


6.  What  class  of  tenement  house  owners  did  Miss  Addams 
find  hardest  to  deal  with?  Why? 

7.  To  what  class  of  people  did  Hull-House  make  its  first 
^  appeal  ?  Why  ? 

What  were  the  various  means  used  to  attract  boys  to 
Hull-House?  Girls?  In  what  ways  was  it  made  attractive 
to  older  persons? 

19. y  What  does  Miss  Addams  consider  “the  simple  human 
(j?  foundations  which  are  certainly  essential  for  continuous  liv¬ 
ing  among  the  poor”? 

10.  Give  the  purpose  of  Hull-House  as  stated  in  the  char¬ 
ter.  Prove  from  the  description  of  conditions  in  this 
chapter  that  such  a  place  was  needed. 

Chapter  VI.  1.  Why  does  Miss  Addams  reproduce  an 
address  delivered  in  1892? 

2.  Repeat  the  three  motives  which  Miss  Addams  believes 
urge  educated  young  people  to  take  up  settlement  work. 

3.  Why  can  settlement  work  “stand  for  no  political  or 
social  propaganda”? 


462  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

4.  What  are  the  duties  of  a  resident  at  a  settlement 
house,  as  set  forth  in  this  address? 

Chapter  VII.  1.  Why  was  the  Hull-House  coffee-house 
opened?  How  did  the  residents  prepare  themselves  to  make 
it  useful?  Why  did  the  food  sales  go  slowly  at  first? 

2.  Recount  the  Hull-House  Cooperative  Coal  Associa¬ 
tion  experiment.  Why  did  it  fail? 

3.  What  was  the  next  cooperative  experiment?  Why  was 
it  more  successful? 

4.  How  were  the  Hull-House  experimenters  treated  by  the 
public  at  first?  What  caused  a  change  of  attitude  later? 

5.  Why  did  Miss  Addams  refuse  the  first  offer  of  funds 
for  the  clubhouse?  Do  you  approve  of  her  stand?  Why? 

6.  Name  in  order  the  various  additions  to  Hull-House 
facilities  mentioned  in  this  chapter  and  tell  how  each  was 
made  possible. 

Chapter  VIII.  1.  In  what  way  did  Hull-House  make  life 
more  bearable  for  the  old  women  in  the  County  Infirmary? 

2.  Do  you  know  whether  your  county  has  a  poor  farm? 
If  so,  where  is  it  located?  Can  you  describe  it? 

3.  What  is  the  work  of  the  Visiting  Nurse  Association? 

4.  Relate  Miss  Addams’s  experience  on  the  committee 
dealing  with  the  unemployment  situation  in  1893. 

5.  Cite  instances  showing  the  kindness  of  the  poor  to¬ 
ward  one  another. 

6.  Explain  the  following:  “The  Settlement  is  valuable 
as  an  information  and  interpretive  bureau.” 

7.  Describe  the  beginnings  of  the  day  nursery. 

8.  How  is  this  work  now  carried  on? 

9.  Why  does  Miss  Addams  relate  the  story  of  “Goosie”? 

Chapter  IX.  1.  Explain  the  difference  between  a  socialist 

and  an  anarchist. 

2.  Sum  up  Miss  Addams’s  statement  of  the  creed  of  each. 


STUDY  QUESTIONS  463 

4  3.  Name  the  two  classes  into  which  Miss  Addams  divides 

the  Chicago  of  her  day? 

4.  Restate  the  business  man’s  reasons  for  distrusting  the 
reformer. 

5.  How  does  Miss  Addams  characterize  the  decade  from 
'  1890  to  1900  in  Chicago? 

6.  Mention  important  movements  with  which  she  had 
'  been  connected  during  that  time. 

Chapter  X.  1.  Recount  instances  showing  the  evil  effects 
of  child  labor. 

2.  What  has  your  state  done  to  prevent  such  things 
happening? 

3.  Has  any  national  law  on  this  subject  been  passed 
since  Miss  Addams  wrote  this? 

4.  Account  for  the  opposition  to  the  passage  of  the 
Illinois  Factory  Regulation  law? 

5.  Why  did  Miss  Addams  favor  an  8-hour  law  for  working 
women?  Has  your  state  such  a  law? 

6.  Explain  “sweatshop.”  Why  would  such  a  system 
naturally  flourish  among  foreigners? 

7.  Why  did  Miss  Addams  help  organize  labor  unions 
among  working  women?  How  does  she  explain  the  close 
relation  of  the  Settlement  to  all  labor  troubles? 

Chapter  XI.  1.  Give  the  origin  of  the  Hull-House 
labor  museum. 

2.  What  did  Miss  Addams  find  back  of  the  break  between 
immigrant  parents  and  their  American-trained  children? 

3.  How  can  cooking  and  sewing,  as  taught  in  the  public 
schools,  help  to  Americanize  a  foreign  family? 

4.  How  can  America  hope  to  receive  anything  of  value 
rrom  the  immigrant? 

Chapter  XII.  1.  Why  did  Miss  Addams  go  to  visit 
Tolstoy  ? 


464  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

2.  What  resolution  did  she  make  while  there?  Why  did 
she  fail  to  keep  her  resolution  on  her  return? 

3.  Can  you  see  why  colonies  founded  on  Tolstoy’s  theories 
would  naturally  fail? 

Chapter  XIII.  1.  Describe  Miss  Addams’s  fight  for 
better  sanitation. 

2.  How  was  she  able  to  secure  the  cooperation  of  the 
women  of  the  neighborhood?  The  children? 

3.  How  is  garbage  removed  in  your  district? 

4.  Why  did  Miss  Addams  fight  for  better  housing  condi¬ 
tions? 

5.  Mention  other  public  services  rendered  by  Hull-House, 
as  described  in  this  chapter. 

Chapter  XIV.  I.  How  did  Hull-House  residents  come  to 
accept  city,  state,  and  county  offices? 

2.  Name  some  of  the  offices  held. 

3.  Mention  other  civic  enterprises  in  which  Hull-House 
cooperated. 

4.  Describe  the  campaign  against  the  “the  corrupt  aider- 
man.” 

5.  Why  did  it  fail? 

6.  What  does  this  show  as  to  the  necessity  for  investigat¬ 
ing  men  for  whom  we  are  called  upon  to  vote? 

7.  Why  does  Miss  Addams  favor  a  civil  service  examina¬ 
tion  as  a  means  of  selecting  “public  servants”? 

8.  Sum  up  the  work  of  the  Juvenile  Protective  Associa¬ 
tion. 

9.  Why  did  Miss  Addams  accept  a  position  as  member  of 
the  Chicago  Board  of  Education? 

10.  Why  did  she  find  it  impossible  to  secure  satisfactory 
results? 

11.  What  was  the  final  outcome  of  the  attempt  to  “take 
the  schools  out  of  politics”? 


STUDY  QUESTIONS  465 

12.  What  part  did  the  Chicago  newspapers  take  in  the 
struggle?  Why? 

13.  Give  the  reasons  assigned  by  various  groups  of  women 
for  wanting  the  right  to  vote.  Comment  on  each. 

Chapter  XV.  1.  Classify  the  different  Hull-House  clubs 
and  discuss  the  purpose  of  each. 

2.  In  what  ways  did  the  clubs  help  to  inspire  their  mem¬ 
bers  to  higher  things? 

3.  Why  did  Hull-House  find  a  need  for  recreational  clubs? 

4.  Explain  the  work  of  the  social  extension  committee. 

5.  How  do  the  experiences  of  the  club  members  react  up¬ 
on  the  lives  of  their  own  family  circle? 

6.  Why  did  the  English  visitor  accuse  Americans  of  being 
indifferent  to  social  conditions? 

7.  What  has  your  community  done  to  investigate,  with  a 
view  to  bettering,  the  conditions  under  which  the  masses  of 
the  people  must  live? 

8.  Can  you  name  any  organizations  for  social  betterment 
in  your  community,  or  give  instances  of  good  accomplished 
by  them? 

Chapter  XVI.  1.  Why  did  the  Hull-House  residents 
hold  art  exhibits?  How  did  the  foreign  visitors  regard  the 
exhibits?  Why  were  the  exhibits  finally  discontinued? 

2.  Describe  the  work  in  arts  and  crafts  at  Hull-House. 

3.  In  what  way  do  the  music  classes  minister  to  the  needs 
of  the  Hull-House  district?  What  was  often  the  effect  of  the 
industrial  world  on  the  talent  uncovered  in  the  school? 

4.  Give  the  three  ends  to  be  achieved  by  the  introduction 
of  dramatic  work  at  Hull-House.  Give  instances  to  show 
that  each  goal  was  reached. 

5.  What  great  truth  regarding  the  function  of  the  stage 
came  to  Miss  Addams  as  a  result  of  her  witnessing  the  Ober- 
ammergau  Passion  Play? 


466  TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

6.  Recount  the  difficulties  experienced  in  selecting  the 
decorations  for  the  Hull-House  Theatre.  How  was  the 
matter  finally  decided? 

7.  Explain  “Young  Lincoln . at  the  moment  he 

received  his  first  impression  of  the  ‘great  iniquity. 

8.  Why  would  a  community  like  that  of  the  Hull-House  dis¬ 
trict  respond  to  appeals  to  the  artistic  instinct? 

9.  Do  you  believe  it  is  worth  while  for  purely  American 
communities  to  cultivate  this  instinct?  Why? 

10.  Has  your  community  any  organization  similar  to  those 
described  in  this  chapter? 

Chapter  XVII.  1.  When  and  under  what  circumstances 
was  President  McKinley  assassinated? 

2.  Why  was  the  editor  referred  to  in  this  chapter  arrested? 
Why  did  Miss  Addams  go  to  visit  this  editor  in  prison? 

3.  How  did  Miss  Addams  see  in  the  story  of  McKinley’s 
slayer  a  challenge  to  the  forces  for  social  betterment  in  Amer¬ 
ican  cities? 

4.  Discriminate  the  terms  anarchist  and  socialist ,  and  show 
that  the  two  should  never  be  confused. 

5.  How  did  the  Averbuch  incident  affect  the  Russian-Jew- 
ish  colony’s  opinion  of  America? 

6.  Which  does  Miss  Addams  consider  more  effective  as  a 
means  toward  Americanization,  classes  in  citizenship  or 
humane  and  intelligent  treatment  of  the  foreigner? 

7.  How  only  can  those  who  have  fled  from  persecution 
abroad  be  led  to  love  America  and  trust  in  her  government? 

8.  How  did  Miss  Addams  regard  the  use  of  assassination 
as  a  weapon  of  the  Russian  revolutionists?  How  did  the 
revolutionists  defend  themselves?  How  has  this  idea  carried 
over  into  the  present  Russian  revolution? 

9.  How  were  Miss  Addams  and  Hull-House  penalized 
for  attempting  to  secure  a  fair  hearing  for  the  foreigners? 


STUDY  QUESTIONS  467 

10.  Do  you  recognize  the  allusion  to  one  who  “encouraged 
harlots  and  sinners'’? 

Chapter  XVIII.  1.  Why  were  college  extension  classes 
opened  at  Hull-House? 

2.  Explain  the  work  of  university  and  normal  extension 
courses. 

3.  In  what  ways  did  the  people  of  the  neighborhood  show 
their  interest  in  the  Sunday  night  lectures? 

4.  Why  has  it  been  so  difficult  to  get  the  right  sort  of  lec¬ 
tures  for  Hull-House  audiences? 

5.  Give  Miss  Addams’s  definition  of  the  object  of  art.  In 
what  ways  has  Hull-House  sought  to  attain  this  objective? 

6.  How  has  the  culture  Hull-House  has  sought  to  give  its 
people  differed  from  so-called  “college  culture”? 

7.  What  two  distinct  trends  mark  the  demand  for  classes 
for  women  at  Hull-House? 

8.  What  purposes  have  the  trades  classes  for  boys  served? 

9.  What  types  of  athletic  contests  have  been  favored  in 
the  Hull-House  gymnasium?  Why? 

10.  How  does  Miss  Addams  justify  the  great  number  of 
purely  recreational  facilities  offered  by  Hull-House? 

11.  Relate  the  incident  of  the  Columbian  Guards.  Why 
does  Miss  Addams  class  it  as  “a  Quixotic  experiment”? 

12.  In  what  ways  have  the  Hull-House  residents  them¬ 
selves  been  “educated”  through  their  work? 

13.  Why  was  Miss  Adams  unable  to  hold  regular  religious 
services  among  the  residents? 

14.  What  is  the  settlement’s  “fourfold  undertaking”? 

15.  Sum  up  Miss  Addams’s  account  of  the  educational  ac¬ 
tivities  of  a  settlement  house. 

16.  Explain  “  .  .  .  .the  attempt  to  socialize  democracy.” 

17.  Why  is  this  such  an  important  undertaking  in  a  coun¬ 
try  like  America? 


c teas- 


BOSTON  COLLEGE 


3  9031  029  46107 


